Biological Diversity Act, 2002: threat to agricultural production and food security!

摘要

The year 2008 witnessed the lowest food grain stocks in the last three decades and the world had consumed more food than it produced. The Indian economy has been growing rapidly at an impressive annual rate of about 8.5% over the last few years, yet India is the home for 20% of the chronically hungry of the world and 24% of its population is undernourished. This is mainly attributable to the slow pace of growth of the agricultural sector (2.5%) in the past decade, besides the disparity in access to the resources. The ecologic and economic distress in the farming sector, manifested as the continuing national tragedy of farmers' suicides and the large scale import of food grains after three decades of food self-sufficiency at prices higher than that of the internal market, are pointing to an impending, yet avoidable food crisis. Food security is an essential pre-requisite for national security and sovereignty. India, heading towards the status of the most populated country in the world by 2050 (ref. 5), is left with only 2.5% of the global land area and 7.8% of the biodiversity to produce food for 18% of the world population. Wise management of land, water and biodiversity is the key to achieve sustainable food security. Among these three pillars of food security, land and water are limited and the least amenable for augmentation. But the biodiversity component, being truly renewable, offers unlimited opportunities to enrich the food production as its use in a given system does not affect its availability elsewhere. Our challenge of feeding the ever-increasing population in the midst of the climate chaos can only be addressed by drawing heavily from the global plant genetic estate.