The 47 articles of the book cover a range of topics from food crisis, wheat import, global warming, R&D in agriculture and GM technology, with specific reference to Bt Cotton, Bt Rice and Bt Brinjal. Indian agriculture is at a cross-road. The most worrying aspect is the crisis on the food front. Post reform period food grains production has plummeted to 1.6 per cent per annum, while population growth is now at 1.9 per cent per annum, which has clearly set in the "Malthusian Phenomenon" of population growth outstripping food production growth. The author, through his writings, which have been captured in this book, has been warning the nation on the impending food crisis. The wheat import for the second year in succession vindicates his warning. Industrial agriculture, euphemistically called the "green revolution", though produced food in plenty in the initial phase of its launch, has run into a road block with irremediable problems on the soil front. Degraded soils, drying aquifers and vanishing bio diversity due to continuous monoculture of rice-wheat, have all been too big a price to pay. The GM technology is no panacea for the ills of Indian agriculture. Instead of "targeting" the farmer through a "package of practices" which the agricultural fraternity develops on the experiment stations, which is nothing but an artefact, and which is relied upon since decades, the farmer has to be at the center of developing any innovative system of cropping. As clearly pointed out in the latest report by the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, "Economic Outlook for 2007-08", which puts India in poor light compared to China, the "traditional excuses" for India’s "sub standard performance in the farm sector", are not only "tired", but "inadequate". The book is a critical analysis of where India’s agriculture went wrong and where it ought to go from now on.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR K. P. Prabhakaran Nair
K P Prabhakaran Nair Ph.D is a world-renowned agronomist and soil scientist, having worked in Europe, Africa and Asia for over three decades and has held many positions of prestige, notable among which are the National Science Foundation Professorship of The Royal Society, Belgium; Senior Professorship at the Faculty of Agriculture, The University of Fort Hare, Alice, Republic of South Africa (Alma Mater of President Nelson Mandela); Professor and Head, Department of Agriculture, The University Center, Republic of Cameroon. He is a former Rockefeller Fellow and a Senior Fellow of the world renowned Alexander von Humboldt Research Foundation of The Federal Republic of Germany and a Visiting Professor to several European Universities. Recipient of the Robertson Memorial Gold Medal for outstanding contributions in Agronomy, he is best known, the world over, for the development of "The Nutrient Buffer Power Concept", a revolutionary soil management technique, which has thrown the greatest challenge to the fallacies of industrial agriculture, euphemistically known as the "green revolution". He is the first and only Agricultural Scientist in the world invited four times to contribute invitational chapters for Advances in Agronomy, the magnum opus of agricultural science. Author of more than 100 research papers published in highly prestigious international scientific journals, and a book entitled "Principles of Soil Fertility and Plant Nutrition" donated to the people of The Republic of Cameroon without receiving any pecuniary reward in return, his revolutionary soil management concept was chosen as the book chapter for the 1993 "Spirit of Enterprise Rolex Awards" publicatoin of the Rolex Foundation, Switzerland, for which late Sir Edmund Hillary of Mount Everest fame wrote an illuminating Foreword saluting the human enterprise behind the concept translated to farm practice to ameliorate the plight of the poor farmers of Africa and Asia, untouched by the "high input technology" of the so-called green revolution. Recipient of many national and international awards, he was voted by an eminent international jury as the "First Runner Up" in 1999 and "Second Runner Up" in 2001 for the very prestigious International Fertilizer Award instituted by the International Fertilizer Industry Association, Paris, for the development of "The Nutrient Buffer Power Concept" and in 2005 received the Swadeshi Sastra Puraskar for outstanding contributions to agricultural science. Widely travelled, Prof. Nair speaks both German and French.
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