an innovative national program that ran from 1970 to 1996, helped create a national dairy industry that integrated small-scale farmers—many of them women—with village-level dairy cooperatives, commercial dairy processors and distributors, and new technologies to modernize the industry.

With the backing of a supportive policy environment that ensured the dairy industry’s steady growth and development, India went from being a net importer of dairy products to a major player in the global dairy market.

Between 1970 and 2001, dairy production in India increased at the respectable rate of about 4.5 percent per year, with estimates during
2007–08 indicating that dairy production has exceeded 100 million tons per day. As a result, millions of consumers now have better access to milk and other dairy products.

Operation Flood laid the foundation for the integration and growth of the national dairy industry. In the process of linking India’s major cities with rural cooperatives,
Operation Flood brought significant technological advances into the rural milk sector, commercialized smallholder dairy production, and transformed the policy environment in support of dairy industry growth. Of the program’s 9 million direct beneficiaries, 73 percent were small, marginal, and landless farmers who saw their incomes double from this intervention.

An estimated 620,000 wheat farmers in northern India have benefited significantly from the introduction of crop management techniques known as zero-tillage cultivation. In this practice, the seeds are planted in unplowed fields in order to conserve soil fertility, economize on scarce water, reduce land degradation, and lower production costs.

Varying forms of the technique have been adopted over an estimated 1.76 million hectares of wheat, particularly in the Indian states of Haryana and Punjab, with average income gains amounting to Rs 8,000–15,000 per household. IFPRI

Diffusion of improved pearl millet and sorghum was achieved through longterm investments by the Indian government, state governments, and the international agricultural research system. This effort contributed vitally to reducing food insecurity in India’s arid and semi-arid tropics, where a majority of the country’s poor are still concentrated. National average yields of sorghum and pearl millet have increased by up to 85 percent over the last four decades, and almost 80 percent of sorghum and pearl millet areas are now sown with high yielding varieties. The emergence of private seed companies further expanded access to these improved varieties among the 6 to 9 million smallholder households cultivating these crops.

Concerted effort by national veterinary services in both industrialized and developing countries, aided by international organizations, has brought the once dreaded rinderpest livestock virus to the point of extinction. Control programs in the last 20 years have contributed significantly to the eradication of rinderpest, using vaccine innovations and new epidemiological and surveillance tools based on participatory techniques. These programs have protected an estimated 39 million livestock keepers from experiencing major losses in milk, meat, and hide production, as well as losses of household incomes and assets. The fact that the virus is no longer circulating in domesticated or wild animals anywhere in the world is a remarkable achievement, on a par with the eradication of smallpox in the human population—the only other case of global eradication of an infectious disease. IFPRI

Potato blight is a disease caused by a fungus which targets potatoes both in the field and in storage.  It can destroy an entire crop of potatoes within one or two weeks, and it can survive year after year in the tubers of infected potatoes, which release millions of new spores when the next rainy season comes around.

Potato blight has devastated potato crops for hundreds of years.  In 2007, 70% of India’s potato crop and 50% of Bangladesh’s crop were destroyed.  This blight was also responsible for the Irish potato famine, which killed millions of farmers in the mid 19th century.

As highlighted in a recent round of field trials has proven successful, and the new potatoes will be licensed to both private and public enterprises soon.  This means that poorer farmers can also access the seeds through local distribution channels.

A team of economists estimates that farmers will be able to double their incomes as a result of this new development.  They will require less chemicals to protect their crops, and they are more likely to have excess yield which they can sell as a cash crop.  The labour required to farm potatoes is also expected to decrease by 11%. Farming First
Compiled by: K.Ramasubba Reddy 091009