Agricultural Development in India - An Overview

AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN INDIA-AN OVERVIEW ; Improvements in agricultural productivity create social and economic ripple effects. With increased incomes, small farmers can better feed their families, send their children to school, provide for their health, and invest in their farms. This makes their communities economically stronger and more stable. Over the past 200 years, nearly every part of the developed world has seen an agricultural transformation. As farming improved, so did incomes, health, and economies. More recently, weve seen amazing progress in parts of the developing world. During the Green Revolution, which took place from the 1960s to the 1980s, improvements in staple crops such as maize, wheat, and rice helped double the amount of food produced, saved hundreds of millions of lives, and drove broader development throughout much of Asia and Latin America. There were also some serious unintended consequencesparticularly regarding the environmentthat left us with important lessons for today. But the efforts demonstrated that large-scale progress against hunger and poverty is possible. In the last several years, the global community has begun to refocus its attention on agriculture. Rising food prices and concerns about feeding a growing population are prompting more and more organizations and governments to understand the urgency of supporting agricultural development.