Bio-Energy not at the cost of food security: Sharad Pawar

17 October 2008

Agriculture minister Sharad Pawar yesterday said conversion of foodgrains and edible oil seeds for producing bio-fuel would create food security concerns, with the diversion of agricultural land for growing biofuel plants likely to end up being self defeating.

In his World Food Day address at a function in in New Delhi, Pawar said, "While the quest of the world community for finding sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels is well appreciated, manufacture of bio-fuels at the cost of foodgrains needs to be examined in more depth.

"The impact of diversion of land, which grows cereal for human consumption into production for bio-fuels is likely to be self-defeating," Pawar said. India's policy, therefore, is the use of non-cereal biomass, crop residues and for cultivation of jatropha on degraded and waste land for bio-fuel production, he said. 

On the need to prepare the country to tackle the adverse impact of climate change, Pawar called for higher investment in agriculture, especially in research, and making research products easily available to the farmers.

"What is needed is increasing investments in rural infrastructure and agricultural research and development and transferring new technology to farmers to enable them to cope with challenges of climate change." The use of frontier technologies in conjunction with sound conventional approaches and enhancing input use efficiency will go a long way in mitigating the effect of climatic change in the context of increasing foodgrains production and productivity. There is an urgent need to enhance investment in research and making research products easily available to the farmers."

Pawar said that the country was confident of  meeting the challenges of food security. He stressed that appropriate measures taken in recent years had led to record foodgrain production and procurement.