Food crisis, crude shock drive youths to agri fields

Urbanisation will change India’s landscape. That is what all the pundits have been predicting since the dawn of reforms in the country.

But, then the world doesn’t follow predictions. It has its own ways of turning things upside down.

Till recently you must have heard about educated people rushing to the metros to look for jobs and make a career.

Take the case of Kerala, a place where educated unemployed youths are easily available. Till now they used to hunt for jobs in foreign shores and in the metros like Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata. They never bothered about agriculture after their graduation.

Same is the case with most of the educated youths in the country. In fact, agriculture has been a very bad profession in the job market. And, if you are the child of a farmer your chances of making it big in the urban world is limited because, your background may not suit the urbanized world.

Youth from several states faced this problem. But, things are changing fast now. The food crisis looming large over the world and the skyrocketing crude prices have been an eye-opener for the world and its youth.

Moreover, the changed needs of the world have thrown open various opportunities for people to make money. One of them is agriculture — till now looked down upon as a loss making venture.

But, all of a sudden, food demand has gone up. But, the production is not enough. So prices have started moving up. Slowly, farmer has become a fried for the world. The world realized that without the farmer, it has nobody to feed itself.

So, enterprising youths across India are also realizing this factor and they are chucking jobs to embrace agriculture in a big way.

You can now see more and more people seeking loans to set up plantations of Jatropha and other biofuel producing plants. Again, you may soon encounter youths who hunt for agricultural land to plant cash crops and cereals.

These were rare phenomenon a few years ago. Because, that time the priority was to get rid of the farmer tag. Slowly, educated youths are now not shy of saying that they are into farming. Even cattle breeding has become a professional venture in several states.

The jatropha shrub, a cash crop yielding the promise of oil, is also instigating a reverse migration in some of the North-East states.

Jatropha curcas is a poisonous shrub of the euphorbia family, originating in Central America, and is believed to have potential to yield oil, though it is still to be tested for large-scale commercial applications. India has been encouraging its use in biodiesel production.

Though it has no applications in the food sector, its chief selling point as a bioenergy crop is that it grows in marginal, eroded land and is resistant to drought. So, the crop is not expected to compete for land where food could be grown, nor does it require a lot of water, fertilisers or pesticides.

With global oil prices hitting the roof in recent months, jatropha cultivation is increasingly being seen as an option by small and marginal farmers.

In the North East region, so far nearly 40,000 hectares of wasteland have been covered with jatropha. In Nagaland, jatropha plantations have come up on the hills adjoining Dimapur. Farmers hope to double their income when the plant matures and its seeds can be sold for extraction of green fuel.

The success of the jatropha initiative, however, clearly rests on the Centre’s plans for petroleum companies to blend conventional diesel with up to five per cent of biodiesel, though this is yet to be made mandatory as in the case of ethanol, where a mandatory five per cent blend has been introduced.