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'…It is this missing ingredient that I helped to provide by undertaking a search for genes for non-lodging plant habit…’– taken from a recent newspaper article by Prof.M.S.Swaminathan. Even a sincere googling did not help me figure out the meaning of the line; especially the term given towards the end of the line. But for that, the Prof has inimitably articulated what he has been yelling whenever he got a chance: “Guys, we will run short of food very soon”. It is a common knowledge that right from hinterlands of Haryana to the Kaveri delta, swathes of agriculture land is being gobbled by non-farmers like us. The answer lies in “productivity enhancement”, we say. Compared with the comparables (!) we easily have a scope of cutting down our cultivated area by half and still maintain this day’s level of production. In other words, we can quickly double the yield levels. We can also manage the farm growth at a level that will be good enough to feed our yearly addition to the number of mouths. (By the way, the per hectare consumption of fertilisers has more than doubled in the last twenty years) There is a whole of lot technology available these days. Right from GM crops to mobile apps with live updates on rates at the nearest mandi, technology is there to our rescue. Why bother brother? There is no problem with the malls and apartments eating into the erstwhile farms teeming with food crops and associated birds, worms, rodents, snakes, frogs and farmers. Anyway, Indian agriculture has been a classic example of disguised unemployment i.e. more than required number of people are loitering in sun and rain on the pretext of sowing, weeding, irrigating, harvesting and the like. Efficiency is the name of the game. The slack should be sucked out. In the whole bargain more economic activity is generated in the system– the huge malls keep thousands of people employed, the money and material that go into the construction of apartments keep alive many men, women and their kids, the aroma of urbanisation will be there for the villagers to fill their lungs and most importantly – the land-owning farmers get attractive prices good enough to get fully settled in their lives. It is a win-all situation. QED. 

Well, not so. Among the many reasons that come in between us and the QED, two stand out. Firstly, though we boast of surpassing the landmark figure of 250 million tonnes of food grain output, we can realise the hollowness of our achievement when we look at the availability of food per person. Without getting into the rigour of statistical models (which I am anyway weak at), we can safely say that – nothing has changed in the past 50 years. Each one of us still has only about 160 kg of food grains per year. So what? The consumption pattern is changing, you see? More and more are shifting from rice and wheat to cereals, pulses and other protein-rich diet. There is a transformational shift happening. Oh, is it? Yes, definitely with those of us visiting the McDs and the KFCs in the weekends that start from Wednesdays these days. But, shockingly, for the country as a whole – each one of us gets only half the amount of cereals and pulses of what we got in 1950. To put things in perspective, grams and pulses put together, what I have for the whole year is only less than 15 kg. Had I been born with my father I would have enjoyed double the availability. Sad truth. But happy for my dad! The short point being, productivity levels are not going to go up drastically. There is going to be a deficit between how much we can get from the shrinking farms and how fast we propagate our species. 

The other problem is more serious. It is going to cripple us. Thanks to many things including the fundamental neglect of the farms by our policies and support systems – not many from the Gen-Z are ready for the treacherous ordeal with nature. They have seen their parents suffer and kill themselves in silence. They have experienced the pain of treading the thin line that separates life and death with every passing day of the delayed onset of monsoon. They have heard, seen and known that all it takes to escape the wrath of agriculture and the uncertainty it brings is – a train to the nearest city. Even with all its visible hardships and hidden vices, you just have to fight with people and concrete in the cities. It is much easier than facing the ire of nature head on, year after year - alone. In a city, there is no need to keep cravingly staring in the direction of the seas with folded palms. There is no stress of the intimidating interest-counter that starts ticking from the very first day you got the first bag of urea with a hope that Varuna will keep up his timing. It is also not necessary to be at the mercy of the government staff, traders and middlemen. Yes, in the cities there is a real threat of getting killed by a stranger at the wheels of a brand new poison-spitting SUV – but it is far better than being pushed to consume pesticides purchased with borrowed money. So, we find the Indian Railways bringing in more and more youngsters from villages to towns and cities. The rotting cities of our country are their land of milk and honey. The urban slums keep swelling and the farm lands gets converted to plots for sale. We keep buying. It appears that the process has become irreversible. Nobody wants to miss a chance to leave the farms.

The whole set of problems that we have given the farmers is sadly bringing about an attitudinal change in the minds of the rural teenagers. They feel it is not their sole burden to carry this huge country on their shoulders. Rightly so. We need not understand what the Prof means by ‘non-lodging plant habit’. But it is high time we had realised the importance of his closing line: ‘If agriculture goes wrong, nothing else will have a chance to go right.

(All views are personal. All facts are almost real.)