Indian Leaders Discuss Efforts to Increase Food Targets
Delivering the Foundation Day Lecture on the 84th Foundation Day of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and ICAR Award Ceremony on 16 July 2012, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, former President of India, suggested research missions for ICAR to accelerate agricultural growth and productivity. The eight research missions include development of farm practices for small and marginal farmers, analyzing and mapping of natural resources, and documentation of all the agricultural technologies. He recommended synchronized integrated action among all the stakeholders to achieve these goals and called upon ICAR to develop a self coordinating mechanism.
The Union Minister of Agriculture and Food Processing Industries, Mr. Sharad Pawar, appreciated the contributions of ICAR in ensuring food security in the country and suggested that both private and public sector research and development organizations should focus on pooling resources and work collaboratively to harness the synergies. He also mentioned about record food grain production in the last two years with landmark achievement of crossing 250 million mark for overall food grains and 100 million mark for rice production. Notably, a bumper harvest has been achieved even for non-food grains crops such as 35 million bales of cotton, more than 350 million tonnes sugarcane, 77 million tonnes fruits, 149 million tonnes vegetables and 8.3 million tonnes of fish.
For more details visit http://www.icar.org.in/node/4720 A copy of Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam's speech is available at http://www.icar.org.in/files/apj-abdul-kalam-foundation-day-lecture-16-07-2012.pdf. A copy of Mr. Sharad Pawar's talk is at http://www.icar.org.in/files/AM-AGRIC-SP-16-07-2012.pdf.
This article is part of the Crop Biotech Update, a weekly summary of world developments in agri-biotech for developing countries, produced by the Global Knowledge Center on Crop Biotechnology, International Service for the Aquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications SEAsiaCenter (ISAAA)
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