What are the major challenges facing both global and Indian agriculture?
The challenge for the Indian agriculture is to produce more food. Although, we seem to be in a good shape now, you see there are 250 million people who go to bed hungry everyday. If they have the purchasing power, then we will have a shortage of the food situation. And our population is increasing at a fast pace. We are adding 18 million people every year. So the food production must continue to increase at about the same rate. Otherwise we will run into problems that we had in the 1950s and 1960s. Further investments in irrigation has virtually ceased and good land is being lost to industrialization. If present trends continue, it will not be possible to meet future demand for food. GM crops will be helpful here. We can use both conventional methods as well as the biotechnology. Both should be used, wherever there is application. Globally there is a lot of work going on. The food security seems to be adequate. Only developing countries have some problem but most of the European countr
