More production from less resources: India’s ag challenge

In just five short years, he points out, India’s population will surpass China’s.

With 1.3 billion mouths to feed by 2022, rising incomes and gross domestic product likely to grow by seven to eight per cent for the next ten years and a population that is spending as much as 45 per cent of its income on food, the sheer magnitude of demand is astounding.

Add in the fact the average farm holding size in India is just 1.15 hectares and shrinking, and water supplies on a per capita basis are going the same way.

“You can see the picture of what is going to be the pressures on Indian agriculture,” said Mr Gulati, from the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations.

“We have limited resources. Innovation right along the agri value chain is the only answer for us.”

And imports.

That’s where Australia comes in - and here is an example of what effect Indian demand can have.

“The last two years we have seen back-to-back drought,” Mr Gulati said.

“We were down in pulses so we imported from Australia.

“This year, our production of pulses will be 30pc higher. Your chickpea prices are going to tumble.”

Mr Gulati was a keynote speaker at this year’s Australian Bureau of Agricultural Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) Outlook conference in Canberra.

He presented an “innovation matrix”, that covers agri-food policies, production process, supply chain management and processing and value-adding, which he said was reshaping Indian agriculture with the view to allow more to be produced from fewer resources.  

India was now moving away from food subsidy policy to direct household income support, he said.

The $22b being pumped into creating cheap food was resulting in mass leakage in the system, he said.

It would be better directed to on-farm savings and investments in water in order to allow for increased agricultural production.

Mr Gulati also outlined a host of innovations unfolding across Indian agriculture, from biofortified crops to irrigation water use efficiency gains, hydroponics and aeroponics and the harvesting of solar power.

Solar was proving a “third crop” for Indian farmers, he said.

“It helps you to have irrigation so can have two crops in a year on the ground but also sell a product into the grid - your third crop,” he said.

With farm labour costs increasing - a lift of 15 to 20pc in the last 15 years - there had been an infusion of capital into agriculture.

“The problem again is with a holding size of 1.15ha average - how is a farmer going to afford this?” Mr Gulati said.

“The new model: farmers have the benefit of uber tractors and uber harvesters.

“The big company Mahindra is aggressively coming forward on this. You just give a call, it’s done and you pay for it.”

From global positioning systems and unmanned aerial vehicles, to drones, robotics and big data - all these global innovations are coming in India and “people are getting into this”, according to Mr Gulati.

In 2016-17, India is looking at a bumper harvest after two years of drought.

The prices of fresh produce is crashing. Some farmers are selling for less than 5 cents a kilogram at the moment, Mr Gulati said.

This is because processing and cold storage is limited. That in itself presents opportunity for agribusiness, he said.