'Asian nations must raise farm output'

By Our Staff Correspondent

JAIPUR, OCT. 21. The Asian financial crisis, which created panic among the South-East Asian countries recently, is still far from over and necessitates greater attention to agriculture and poverty alleviation. A sustainable agriculture alone can strengthen the economy of Asian countries.

With this opinion, the third Asian Conference of Agricultural Economists concluded here on Friday. About 100 experts participating in the three-day meet called for more interaction between economists and scientists for ensuring food security. The agricultural production must be increased in accordance with the demands of domestic market, they felt.

Noted economist and Chairman of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), Jaipur, Prof. V.S. Vyas, said equal attention must be paid to the State, market and civil society for ensuring food security while the Asian crisis had significant lessons for the continent with regard to resource mobilisation and utilisation.

The conference was organised by the IDS in collaboration with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and the Indian Society of Agricultural Economists (ISAE). Five plenary sessions were organised and an equal number of concurrent sessions conducted during the three days of the meet. There were two special sessions on ``Income distribution and poverty in rural Asia'' and ``Asian crisis: Lessons for Asian agriculture''.

The last plenary session on ``Indian agriculture'' held on Friday discussed the strategy to modernise agriculture, improve agricultural marketing, increase employment opportunities and alleviate poverty in India.

Dr. S.L. Bapna of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad, favoured evolution of an appropriate communication system as an infrastructure facility for the farmers. He called for use of Internet for communication in the agriculture sector and said the establishment of futures market would also increase generation of outlook information and communication of information.

Dr. Sheila Bhalla of the Institute for Human Development, New Delhi, suggested four kinds of policy implications with regard to divergent regional development at the State level. While the rural employment, productivity and poverty should be looked at separately from the corresponding urban problems, too much public money should not be invested in self- employment schemes to promote family-operated enterprises, she felt.

Dr. Ramesh Chand of the National Centre for Agricultural Economic and Policy Research, New Delhi, emphasised that the best protection against unwanted imports was to improve efficiency of production and reduce cost of production and domestic trade. These would require research and development to evolve cost- saving technology, improved infrastructure, efficient markets and several other bold initiatives to improve competitive edge of Indian agriculture.

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