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Biotech will boost agri, food processing sectors, says Pawar

Senior Congress leader Sharad Pawar today called upon the scientific community to launch a lab-to-land movement in biotechnology as it could become the ''vehicle of India's economic growth''.

The movement, he said, should start from village to metropolis, and place the country on the world map.

Pawar made the inaugural address at a two-day seminar on ''Biotechnology Applications: Relevance to the Indian Farmer'' in Pune.

''My vision is to use biotechnology to raise farm-income, increase agricultural production without depleting the soil, improve soil nutrition, provide microbial inoculation, reduce soil erosion, create integrated pest management system and bio-fertilisers which are environment friendly and locally manufactured," he said.

Stating that biotechnology is the resource available for tackling the problems that India would face in the next millennium, Pawar said, ''My experience has made me more determined that the benefit of biotechnology must reach each and every farmer in this country.'' It should be extended to all areas of farming -- growing food or cash crops, animal husbandry, livestock, vaccines, storing, processing of agricultural produce.

Pawar said biotechnology is a very major thrust area for India as this is the first technological revolution which is not capital intensive. It needs large amount of labour, which is an ideal situation for a country like India which, though short of capital, has enviable resources of skilled manpower.

Secondly, the raw material for biotechnology are biological resources, and India is a home to hundreds of varieties of food and cash crops, medicinal plants and thousands of types of plants, animals and insects, Pawar said.

Unlike in other developing countries, India, Pawar said, has a reasonably high level of indigenous technology in this field. Not cutting edge perhaps, but enough to enable India to convert its rich raw material to biotechnology products.

Pawar urged the scientists to remove the mystique and apprehensions surrounding biotechnology.

He said there is a lot of resistance to biotechnology in some sectors that feel it is an alien technology because multinational companies are using it. But biotechnology is only a technology, the agenda of what we use it for is to be determined by use by the scientists and farmers of this country. They know their interests and need an instrument to serve their interest, he said.

Pawar listed food security, nutritional security, employment opportunities specially in rural areas and an overall development of the economy as the chief concerns over the next millennium.

In order to fully utilise the technology, concerned efforts would have to be made to bring it from lab to the land, he said. instruments and chemicals must be indigenised and our dependence on foreign inputs must be phased out soon in order to make the country self-reliant.

Pawar felt that biotechnology could provide options for income generation by setting up local cooperative seed industries where budding, drafting and multiplication of high-quality seeds could be undertaken for all variety of crops.

In the content of the overall economy, Pawar felt that the technology could help the food processing industry to develop products with longer shelf life. The farmers could increase their earnings several times if their fruits, vegetables, milk, meat and eggs could be converted into products.

''I would like to see India emerge as a major exporter of agricultural produce and products,'' as the country with its 11 agro-climatic zones is in an enviable position, Pawar said.

UNI

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