Eastern India gets an agri institute after 70 years: Will it quicken Green Revolution there?

On Sunday, 28 June, Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for an Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) at Goria Karma in Jharkhand (although the event was held 30 km away on the Bihar border, perhaps to swing some votes in the coming Assembly elections), marking yet another milestone in Bringing Green Revolution to Eastern India (BGREI).

The first green revolution happened in north-west India, in irrigated Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh, because of dwarf varieties of wheat and rice developed by Delhi’s IARI in the 1960s. IARI is known as Pusa Institute because it was shifted from a place by that name in Samastipur district of Bihar after a severe earthquake in January 1934. The shifting was not warranted, so the Prime Minister was perhaps making up for a historical mistake.

Improving the productivity of rice in water-rich eastern India for which it is best suited is an important component of BGREI. It will also mean weaning farmers in north-west India from growing rice in an environmentally unsustainable manner, as they do now.

The pumping of water to raise rice has resulted in the water table in a 9,000 sq km area of central Punjab falling below twenty metres or sixty-six feet. In 110 of 138 blocks, the water utilization rate is more than the rate of recharge, says the state’s 2012-13 economic survey. In the last ten years to kharif 2013-15, Punjab contributed 28 percent of rice procured for distribution through ration shops; Haryana brought in another six percent. This excludes the rice they exported.

In its study on the water intensity of rice cultivation, the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), the government agency that fixes minimum support prices, says Punjab used 5,389 litres of water to produce a kg of rice, while West Bengal uses the least at 2713 litres per kg. Punjab’s water productivity was 19 kg of rice per lakh litres of water while that of West Bengal was almost double at 37 kg for the same volume of water.

Punjab, therefore, wants to shift 1.5 million hectares out of 2.82 million ha under paddy to other crops like maize, cotton, pulses, and fruits and vegetables, over the next three years, its Additional Chief Secretary Suresh Kumar said at a seminar in Delhi in April on maize.

But farmers are not obliging because maize grown in monsoons has a lower yield. It also has few takers because of high moisture content. The central government is not procuring it (despite announcing a support price) because maize is more feed than food; it is not preferred by ration food buyers. Rice, Kumar said, also gave an assured income (profit) of Rs 84,000 per ha and basmati Rs 1 lakh, which other crops could not match.

Since BGREI was launched in Februray 2010 with then Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee making a small allocation of Rs 400 crore in the budget for the following year, Bihar’s annual rice output has increased by nearly half to 6.73 million tonnes in the three years ending 2013-14 as compared to the 2007-10 triennium. That of Chhattisgarh has risen by a third, while of West Bengal and Odisha has remained flat.

An outlay of Rs 400 crore (raised to Rs 1,000 cr two years later) divided among seven states is not much. Money is important, but not critical, says K V Prabhu, Joint Director (Research) at IARI. He lays greater emphasis on bridging the information gap so eastern farmers start demanding seeds that can close the yield gap with the national average. There are not enough seed suppliers in the east too, unlike in Punjab, where farmers are keen to absorb technology.

He gives the example of a high-yielding wheat variety called HD 3086 which Pusa Institute released in 2014. It is tolerant to yellow rust, produces lustrous grain and does not bend easily. Despite unhelpful weather at the time of harvesting earlier this year, farmers reported a yield of 6.5 tonnes per hectare (2.5 acres). It is now being sown over nearly ten million hectares ─ one of the fastest adoption rates.

Prabhu says IARI licensed 108 suppliers to produce the seed in 2014 for the Punjab area alone, and had to turn away applicants because it ran out of breeder seeds used to make certified seeds which farmers use.

Prabhu hopes that once demand for high yielding varieties of seed is created by eastern farmers, seed suppliers will follow.

Bihar says even before BGREI was launched Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had identified agricultural growth as critical to raising the state income per person and reducing poverty. A four-year road map for a ‘rainbow revolution’ (green, white and blue) was crafted in 2008.

The next one, five years long, will continue until 2017. The state revived its seeds corporation and gave a subsidy to farmers to buy rice hybrid seeds from private companies. The improvement in law and order and road connectivity helped in procurement, though in many places, farmers still sell rice below the support prices.

“We have caught up with the national average and we have gone a bit ahead,” says Vijay Prakash, Bihar’s Agricultural Production Commissioner. “The way we are going by the end of the roadmap, I am sure we will be quite near the top few states (in rice yield).”

But Punjab remains a big rice producer. There is no profitable alternative, says A K Singh, Head of Genetics at IARI and a rice breeder since he joined the organisation since 1994. He says Punjab and Haryana should focus on higher value basmati which consumes less water.

In 2014, his team released Pusa Basmati 1509 is a 120-day crop. It takes twenty five days less to mature than its predecessor, Pusa Basmati 1121, or six to seven fewer irrigations.

Traditional basmati took 160 days. “The future belongs to short duration varieties which can increase the cropping intensity (number of crops per acre per year) and the profitability of farmers,” says Singh.

Rice can also be grown less water intensively by sowing it directly. This does away with puddling, transplantation and stagnant water. It saves about Rs 2,000 to Rs 4,000 per acre in labour costs., depending on whether the field is ploughed or not. This method of cultivation is catching on. Punjab has set a target of four lakh ha out of twenty-eight lakh ha to be brought under direct seeded rice, says Singh. Bihar is also promoting it in response to erratic monsoons.

(Vivian Fernandes is consulting editor to www.smartindianagricutlure.in)