Friday, November 18 2005 17:04 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: India should evolve an agriculture growth model that links increase in food grain production to income of farmers to better understand their economic status, an eminent agriculture scientist M S Swaminathan said.

"We have to move beyond simply providing food grain output growth rate. Instead, we have to relate production with incomes of the farmers," Swaminathan said at the Second B P Ghildyal Memorial Lecture organized by Indian Society of Agrophysics here.

Swaminthan also said policy making recommendations should be linked with economic benefits with respect to project implementation.

Citing Chinese experience in farm sector growth process, he said, China recorded an impressive nine per cent GDP growth last year while at the same time farmers' income grew by six per cent.

The target of doubling food grain production needs to be linked with the farmers income growth, he said adding income linked production model would policy making exercise.

Swaminathan said the issue of farmers' income growth has assumed a lot of significance against the backdrop of National Sample Survey Organization's revelation that 45 per cent of farmers think that farming, as an economic activity has become unremunerative activity.

Dwelling on the theme topic 'Agrarian Crisis: Causes and Cures', he said I%9production in recent years has gone below population growth.

Swaminathan, who is also chairman of national farmers' commission, said in order to achieve an eight per cent growth for the overall economy, the farm sector has to grow by four per cent on a sustainable basis.

"Higher farm sector growth can be ensured through higher credit and investment flow with high technological application at the farmer's field," Swaminathan said.

He identified declining factor productivity per unit of land to be the main reason behind slow agrarian growth in recent past and urged all stakeholders to adopt an all out efforts to raise overall total factor productivity.

Swaminathan, regarded as father of Green Revolution, favored a public-private partnership growth model for agriculture along with greater participation of Self Help Groups.

He also advocated enhanced role of quality certification norms for Government sponsored irrigation schemes for reducing dependency on farm subsidies.