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Let's seek an evergreen revolution:

History of the world, to a large extent is the history of agricultural revolutions. The first and the most fundamental of those revolutions was the domestication of crop plants and farm animals. Culminating in the great transition from hunting gathering to agriculture about 10,000 years ago, the first revolution became the mother of human civilization. Since then humans have made a successful livelihood on agriculture and made tremendous improvement as and when needed. Perhaps the biggest success story of agriculture is what popularly got termed as the green revolution in mid 1960’s and Norman Borlaug played a pivotal role in it both as scientist and a social worker. However, these gain have slowed in recent decades and its projected that in 2050 there will more people on earth than together till today and with climate change, limited resources like water and shrinking land to feeding them is the greatest challenge we face today. The emerging picture of agriculture shows that business as usual approach will not work.

A evergreen revolution is badly needed and but before we seek a green revolution we need to seek a new mind set. We need to understand that our stagnation lies in sticking to older remedies, strategies and organizational structures as these are not sufficient to meet the challenges we are facing. I envisaged a multifarious revolution where legumes, oilseeds and even horticultural crops are included beside the cereals and I believe it’s imperative for food security and health. Further we need to seek a path of harmony or at least minimum antagonism with nature that means we need to supplement with organic agriculture, recycle of farm waste, minimize the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and use of integrated and knowledge-intensive management strategies. Apart from concentrating on productivity per se I believe proper grain storage and availability is also critical to food security.

Norman Borlaug rightly said “you can’t build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery”.