Invention to convention -An essential shift in Indian Agriculture As a country, we moved from food starving to food surplus nation in about 75years. Our food grain production increased from 50 Million MT in 1951 to 308 Million MT in 2020-21, which is a considerable achievement. With food grains such as paddy and wheat, shifting from sellers’ market to buyers’ market with bumper production in subsequent years, farmers are facing problems in selling the produce, despite Minimum support price (MSP) mechanisms. In fact it is impossible for any government directly purchasing from farmers at Minimum support price (MSP) and sustain the operations.   The intention of MSP is to act as bench mark price.   While working on MSP, other than cost of production, the other factors such crop planning, value addition possibilities, export potential, cost of buffer stock management etc., shall be considered. Just declaring MSP is not sufficient from Government, it has work on whole lot ...

PADDY CULTIVATION- NECESSITY BRINGS INVENTIONS  In Delta area wet lands , one can grow annually 2 crops of paddy followed by paddy, paddy followed by maize or pulses or single crop of sugarcane. When paddy transplanting, harvesting etc were manual, some farmers were preferring cane cultivation. With change in cultivation practices and increased harvesting problems in cane, in wetlands cane cultivation almost came to an end. In krishna Delta , when the irrigation was not available on time,  farmers out of necessity moved from paddy nursery and transplanting to direct sowing method. Direct Sowing resulted in huge reduction of cost particularly manpower requirements which is scarce in present situation. Due to direct sowing and better drainage facilities, paddy yields increased by 20 to 30% ( 30 bags to 40 bags of 75 kg each). When scientists used to prefer and advocate for direct sowing farmers were not in a mood to listen. With limited options available farmers shifted to...