Indo-US Agriculture Agreement follows the Nuclear Deal

Indo-US Agriculture Agreement's main purpose is to bring in the New Agriculture Technologies - seed, crop production, and produce & food processing technologies, better Agri-business management practices, and more domestic & foreign investments to revitalize the crisis-ridden Indian Agriculture and to bring rural industrialization. An Agro-Climatic Region (similar to Southern California in USA) like Telangana is going to benefit a lot from Indo-US Agriculture Agreement.

No secret that few big multi-national companies (Wal-mart, Monsanto, etc.) are directly involved in the agreement from US side. Also Dr.Mangala Rai, Director General of ICAR (Indian Council of Agriculture Research) and Shri.Sharad Powar, Agriculture Minister and President of ICAR are involved from Indian side along with other team members from different sectors/sections related to Agriculture.

Also there is no doubt that this agreement is going to help MNCs as much as it helps Indian farmers & agriculture. No agreement (or) negotiation is going to be one-sided, generally they will be win-win types. As doctors say, there is no medicine in the world without side effects. In the same way, we will have to face some challenges in the process of implementing Indo-US Agriculture Agreement. In some sense, Nuclear Deal was a pre-requisite for Indo-US Agriculture Agreement to generate enough power to support the new agriculture technologies, which are no doubt energy consuming!

I am very much aware that there will be a similar opposition for this Indo-US Agriculture Agreement as happened in case of Nuclear Deal. To be frank due to various reasons, especially due to inefficient/inferior Seed Technologies, Irrigation Technologies, Crop Management Techniques, Post-harvest & Food Technologies, and Marketing & Retail Management Practices, our agriculture growth got stagnant and almost reached a dead-end. Some farmers (mostly medium-scale farmers with 5-10 acres growing commercial crops) are committing suicides due to year-after-year losses & with unbearable debts and others are unable to see themselves 5-10 yrs down the line into agriculture and stopped any further investments.

I can go on writing on this subject, which I keep very close to my heart and in which I got educated and worked. But I stop here to know comments and opinions from the readers of this blog on this very important agreement, which is going to bring a very positive change in the lives of our rural folks & farmers.

This is just an heads-up for you all. It's also an earnest attempt from my side to pitch a Pro Indo-US Agriculture Agreement point of view.