BioVoice News April 2017 Issue 11 Volume 1 | Page 88

bio quotes Over a period of 65 years, Dr M S Swaminathan has worked in collaboration with scientists and policy-makers on a wide range of problems in basic and applied plant genetics and agricultural R&D. He is considered a global scientist of rare distinction because of the indelible mark he has made on food production in India and elsewhere in the developing world. Government of India has fixed an ambitious target for making the farmers income double in the next five years. To achieve this target, the out of box initiative has been taken instead of traditional system. The declining share of agriculture doesn’t mean that the absolute value of agriculture is dropping. It only means that the overall size of the economy is growing. All you have to do is to plot over time the share of agriculture of few agriculture dependent countries in last 100 years. An important yet neglected aspect of Indian agriculture is the mechanization of the sector. While other sectors grow through continual adoption of more modern technology and access to improved production methods, the mechanization levels in agriculture have remained stagnant technologically for almost 20 years. Radha Mohan Singh, Union Agriculture Minister Pranab Mukherjee, President of India Dr Prabhu L Pingali, Professor of Applied Economics and Director, Tata-Cornell Institute 88 BioVoiceNews | April 2017 Jay Singh, Managing Director, CLAAS Agricultural Machinery