‘Second green revolution’ already here: Scientists

The “second Green revolution” had already come to India including in the ‘rain-fed’ areas where we do not have the other irrigation facilities but depend only on rain, agricultural scientists said Friday. They added that “we should not wait for anyone to come from the US to announce this (second Green Revolution) but should go by the records of our food production in the recent years to acknowledge it.”

The remarks came during a session titled ‘plenary on the achievement of Agricultural Research in India’.

“We divided the past 68 years since 1950 to 2017 into four phases, including Pre-green Revolution, Green Revolution and then two more phases after green revolution as for as cereal production is concerned. In wheat production, there was an increase of 40 kg per hectare from pre-green revolution to green revolution in the late 1960s and in later two phases this has increased by 36 per cent per hectare from the production during the green revolution,” said Dr O P Yadav, director, CAZRI (Central Arid Zone Research Institute), Jodhpur.

Experts said this increase has happened even in rain-fed zones where there is no other mean of irrigation and it is the result of better farm practices and technology.

Dr Ashok K Patra, Director ICAR -Indian Institute of Soil Science, Bhopal, said India had increased its food production manifold despite the fact that soil quality of India was not good due to low Nitrogen level .

“We have been growing 300 million tonnes of foodgrains every year and which is a big achievement for country like India, which used to be highly insufficient in food production,” said he.

“We take 95 per cent of our food from soil only and Soil, which takes 500 to 1000 years to make a good soil, is non renewal. So it is very important for everyone to preserve the natural quality of the soil by not putting large amount of fertilizers, pesticides, plastics in it,” he said.