'We need to stick to farming'

Coming out strongly against the idea of moving people out of agriculture, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) director general S Ayyappan has called for bringing a ‘profit-prestige partnership’ model to farming through innovation and entrepreneurship.

“We need to stick to farming,” he said, stating that agriculture is directly connected to food, nutrition, health and environment of 52 percent of Indian population. “Villages have become old-age homes as youth move out in search of mobility. With pride and profit as ‘agri-preneurs’, why would they go to cities?” he said, delivering the inaugural address at the two-day Global Agri-business Incubation Conference at Icrisat (International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics) here today.

Supporting the agri-business incubation set-up started by Icrisat, he said there were 10 such centres working in five universities in varied agricultural conditions in the country. These have facilitated commercialisation of 44 innovative technologies so far, he said, and called for continuous dialogue between scientists and farmers on an level footing.

The next paradigm in the farm sector was a move from 'primary' to 'secondary' agriculture, which involves steps beyond harvest and value addition to the produce. He said ICAR would create an agri innovation foundation by the end of this year to provide a platform to enable faster spread of innovations and connectivity to markets. In keeping with this, ICAR would modify its National Agricultural Innovation Project to a National Agriculture Entrepreneurship Project.

Pointing out the trend of growing number of women in agriculture, Ayyappan said 36 percent of the 35,000 students in agricultural universities were women and that it was growing. In the 12th Five-Year Plan, it would provide for facilities like creche for women workers in the farm sector.

Explaining the rationale behind agri-business incubation, Icrisat director general William D Dar said the conventional channels of commercialisation through national systems were not enough. The agri-business incubation, conceptualised by the Department of Science and Technology, started with six seed companies in 2000 and now had 40 partners, he said.

The incubation system has so far commercialised 44 technologies through 180 business ventures directly employing close to 1,000 people and has seen a total investment of $18 million, he said. The two-day meet of the Network of Agri-business Incubators would provide a networking forum for investors, innovators and other stakeholders and a platform for sharing experiences and ideas, Dar said.