Faculty of Agriculture of Shoolini University organised a virtual function on the occasion of World Food Day on Friday.
Two eminent agriculture educationists, Dr Panjab Singh and Dr CD Mayee delivered the keynote addresses on this occasion, along with Dr PK Khosla, Vice Chancellor of the university. Dr Panjab Singh is the Chancellor of Rani Lakshmi Bai Agricultural University, Jabbalpur, and former Secretary DARE and Director General ICAR, New Delhi.
Dr Mayee is the President, South Asia Biotechnology Centre, New Delhi, and Chairman AFC Ltd. Mumbai. He is former Chairman of Agricultural Services Recruitment Board, ASRB, New Delhi.
In his welcome address, Prof Khosla narrated the journey of Indian agriculture and recalled the days when the country was going through food shortages. The country was importing foodgrain and also getting it as aid from outside and the emphasis was on quantity only.
Dr. Saurabh Kulshreshtha, Director,Research of the university presented the achievements of Shoolini University, particularly in research.
Dr Mayee and Prof. Singh while delivering their addresses agreed with Dr Khosla and shared the nation’s journey of addressing the challenges low crop yields, and resultant food shortages. Dr Mayee discussed how the use of disruptive technologies in agriculture helped in bringing the green revolution through the use of high yielding varieties, fertilizers and other scientific inputs.
He emphasised the need to diversify our agriculture where the components of fruits, vegetables, oilseeds and poultry etc. contribute towards nutritional security.
In his policy focused address, Prof. Panjab Singh stressed the need to understand and put into practice the water conserving farming techniques. He was of the opinion that at present we are overusing ground water and the same is getting depleting at a very high rate. The need of the day is to utilize water conserving technologies and save this previous natural resources, he added.
Though we have come a long way from subsistence shortage driven agriculture to food surplus producing agriculture, Dr Singh felt that sustaining it, in the long run, can be a problem. We thus need to emphasise natural resource sustaining ways of agriculture.
Ignoring the sustainability of natural resources would pose a challenge to sustain agriculture. So a policy addressing optimal use of natural resources is need of the hour and he cautioned that cost of inaction in this regard would very high, be added.
