Seeding Success through Innovation & Technology: Role of Innovations in Transforming Indian Agriculture

Abstract

Agriculture remains the most important sector for India, vital for ensuring its food and nutritional security. From an economic perspective, the sector provides livelihood means to over 58 percent of the nation’s population, while contributing 14 percent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by providing bulk of the wage goods required by non-agriculture sectors, and most of the raw materials for the industries. The Green Revolution and the transformation it brought about to this sector helped in easing poverty, and proved that agricultural development has a direct role in improving the livelihood of the people and the society. However, despite its importance, various indicators from the sector show that all is not well. Across the world, the challenges facing the sector are immense: declining natural resources, smaller landholdings and lesser area for cultivation, erratic monsoons, climate change crisis, energy crisis, loss of biodiversity, weak extension machinery, rising input costs, inadequate storage infrastructure, high post-harvest losses, and lack of access to markets. There is also an urgent need to promote the competitiveness of this sector and gearing up our agricultural systems including technological aspects so as to meet the pressures of consumer demand and international markets