Director
Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute
(NARI)
PHALTAN-415523,
E-mail: anilrajvanshi@gmail.com
(A talk given at PAN IIT
2006 meet in Mumbai on 24 December 2006)
Introduction
It is a matter of shame that after 60 years of
independence around 60% of our rural population live in very primitive
conditions. Consider the following:
1) They have no electricity and
their lives are in darkness. They use
inefficient kerosene lanterns for light and primitive and ancient biomass cook
stoves for cooking. Modern technology
somehow has not touched their lives.
Besides their poor quality, these devices used by them create tremendous
household pollution. Thus there are estimates that around 1.5 million deaths
per year in rural areas are attributable to inhaling smoke from the inefficient
and primitive biomass stoves.
2)
Around 54% of
3) There is tremendous poverty in rural areas. Continuous suicides of farmers attests to it. In the last 10 years about 1,20,000 farmers have committed suicide. Farming is presently non-remunerative. This is partly because of the policy of low support price for farm produce by the Government of India, which is the biggest buyer of agricultural commodities. Secondly, increased aspirations of farmers to improve their quality of life has made them get into never ending debts of loan sharks. Thus no amount of soft financial packages will prevent the farmers’ suicides or help the marginal farmers. These are all short-term solutions. There is a Chinese saying “You can feed a person for a short time by supplying him fish, but if you teach him how to catch fish he will feed himself the rest of his life”. Thus if we create a long term agricultural policy which brings in wealth to the countryside without much government support, then automatically the farmers’ lot will become better and will help in rural development.
4) There is a serious energy
crisis in
All the above problems can hopefully be solved by
producing energy through agriculture route.
The farming can become remunerative only when it is tied very closely to
industry. This can happen when farms also produce energy besides food. Thus
when the major demand of fuel and electricity of the country is met by the farm
then wealth will automatically flow into rural areas.
Three types of fuels can be produced easily via
agriculture – liquid fuels like ethanol or biodiesel; gaseous fuels like
methane; and electricity. These fuels can be used for transportation,
electricity production and motive power for industries.
The ethanol liquid fuel can be produced from sugar producing agricultural crops like sweet sorghum, sugarbeet, sugarcane etc. while biodiesel can be produced from a horde of oil producing crops like Jatropha, Karanja, Castor etc. Estimates are that agriculture-based liquid fuel industry can be of an order of about Rs. 40-50,000 crores/year thereby providing increasing wealth to farmers.
In any agriculture only 25-40% of the produce is
food. Rest 60-75% are the agricultural residues. Residues can produce electricity (via
biomass-based power plants); ethanol fuel (via enzymatic hydrolysis process);
and diesel (via high temperature pyrolysis route). Any marginal farm can
produce agricultural residues even if the main food crop fails. On an average a farmer can get an extra income
of Rs. 2000-4000/acre from the residues alone if they are used for producing
energy. This income can give him
benefits even in case of a distress sale of his crop.
Today about 600 million tons/year of agricultural
residues are produced in
As the industrial demand for fuels and electricity
increases, we might see large tracts of farmland coming under fuel crops and
food production may suffer. Thus there
is a need to debate the food vs. fuel issues.
Consequently R&D needs to be done on crops, which produce both fuel
and food from the same piece of land. Sweet sorghum is one such crop. Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute
(NARI) pioneered the development of this crop in
A policy has to be made by the Government of India
that by 2015 AD around 80% of all our liquid fuel and 30-40% of all our
electricity will have to be produced from renewables especially biomass. This will result in tremendous growth in the
farm sector and can provide a solution to the problems of the marginal
farmers. In recent times alcohol economy
in
For farming to increase so that it can carry the
major load of food and energy production, adequate water supply has to be
assured. Thus there is a need to change
the existing irrigation policy in which the Government owns most of the
irrigation water bodies. A new water act
on the similar lines as the Electricity Act of 2003 needs to be enacted so that
adequate water can be economically available for agriculture.
IITians can play can important role in rural
development by setting up plants to produce liquid fuels and electricity. The
technology exists. What is needed is the
desire to help the rural
When farms start supplying energy besides food it
will generate additional wealth for 65% of the population who live in rural
areas. Production of energy from agriculture will be the single most important
step in bringing prosperity to rural