Evergreen Revolution- Phase II

The evergreen revolution started under the leadership of the current prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, with the supervision of farm scientist and father of green revolution M S Swaminathan. It was started in 2017 to prepare the country to meet the foreseen challenges in the agricultural sector. The emphasis of this revolution was on taking food security up to nutrition security. The intervention of scientific and technological methodologies was necessary for this vision to succeed. According to Modi’s idea of the evergreen revolution, the country needed to focus on sustainable agricultural production. The aim was to avoid the shortcomings of the green revolution-1 and green revolution-2.

What is Evergreen Revolution

The evergreen revolution started under the guidance of MS Swaminathan, and was a step ahead toward nutritional security and sustainable agricultural production. The Evergreen revolution focussed on dealing with malnutrition – a challenge faced by many people from the backward sections of the country. This revolution started with the idea that the area for crop production and farming would remain the same, with the priority of increasing the productivity of the same land. He also reiterated the government’s aim to provide schemes for agricultural growth to double farmers’ incomes in the coming five years through the revolution. 

Overcoming the shortcomings of the green revolution

The Green revolution had significant shortcomings in groundwater depletion, soil erosion, water pollution, and biodiversity loss. The evergreen revolution was formulated with the hope of overcoming the shortcomings caused by the green revolution over the past 50 years. If successful, this revolution would be treated as a remedy for the country’s agricultural sector and would address India’s agrarian distress.

What were the shortcomings of the green revolution?

1. The rate of malnutrition and hunger due to poverty has been very high throughout the fifty years of the green revolution.

2. Because of a significant focus on wheat and rice production, nutritious crops like pulses and millets were ignored. India is still dependent on imports of these cereals.

3. The green revolution caused infertility and soil erosion due to excessive use of fertilisers, decreasing productivity.

4. The agricultural sector became centric on cereal.

5. Excessive irrigation caused waterlogging and salinity in the fields.

6. Farmers got stuck in a debt trap from banks or moneylenders.

Main Components of Evergreen revolution

1. Higher quotient in pulses to decrease malnutrition.

2. Various regions of the country should be identified with different crops. This should be done by keeping the soil type and weather conditions suitable for a particular crop.

3. Mainstreaming ecological factors along with the scientific technicalities to enhance the working of this revolutionary structure.

4. Anticipatory research to figure out the status of adaptation to climate change and mitigation, and participatory research to involve farmers.

5. Produce more from less land, pesticides, fertilisers, and water to make the revolution sustainable in a real sense.

6. Introducing ITC (Innovative information and communication technologies) to farmers to help increase farm productivity. This provision would give them predictions and alerts on weather conditions, appropriate periods of sowing, and production prices.

7. A service called e-kranti provides farmers with information on prices, net banking details, and online buying or selling of their produce.

8. Introduction of GM food crops (genetically modified) to improve yield, fight high disease levels, and resist pesticides. This step has helped manage weeds, tolerance of abiotic stress, and high-nutrition crops.

Focus on food security

In order to secure the nation in terms of the availability of food, there was a need to increase the productivity of sustainable food grains. Food security means ensuring no citizen of the nation dies of hunger or is malnourished due to poverty. Hence, there should be a stop to imports of important and nutritional food grains and start their efficient production on our land with the help of local resources and skills. Separate agriculture policies should also be made and implied dedicatedly that entirely focus on making plans to ensure food security. This could be done by getting rid of regional disparities, cross-cultural learning, and agricultural knowledge exchange.

Conclusion

The evergreen revolution was started to improve the quality of farming and perpetuity without causing any harm to the ecology. This revolution focuses on nutritional and food security and on eliminating hunger due to poverty. The evergreen revolution aims to bring agriculture, health, and nutrition together and work on them as one unit. MS Swaminathan advised that the long-term and short-term goals should not have a mutual antagonism for the evergreen revolution to survive.