Agro-biodiversity: The future of India's agriculture

The 1990s have been marked by an increasingly acrimonious debate over modern trends in agriculture: the controversy over the so-called Terminator technology, the scandal of the turmeric and Basmati patents claimed by American companies, the imposition of a global trading and patent regime under the World Trade Organisation, and others. Shorn of its acrimony, this debate is welcome, for it is bringing to the fore what must surely be humanity's chief concern: the security of our food supplies. Even as technology produces visions (often real, often not) of bumper harvests, and even as countries like India claim self-sufficiency in foodgrains production, over half the world's population (including tens of millions in India) go to bed hungry every day. Paradoxically, even as income levels rise in many sections of society, nutritional levels, and stability of access to food, are often declining.

There are many reasons for these paradoxes. In this article, the author sets out to demonstrate how the loss of biological diversity and related traditions needs urgent attention. This can no longer be ignored as a concern of the rich…for indeed this loss hits the poor the hardest, and makes farmers, and countries like India, more vulnerable to the vagaries of the global economic system.