'Stress on co-operative farming needed'

Indian economy to be more competitive must give new focus to the agricultural sector in the country as the Indian agriculture is privileged to have more area of land under cultivation than other countries in the world, said Dr B Krishanlal, professor of Economics at Saskatchewan University, Canada and a visiting UGC Fellow.

Addressing to the students of MBA at Institute of Excellence in Management Science here, Krishanlal said " unfortunately, the fragmented and marginal farmers situation has made Indian agricultural sector highly backward in the world".

When compared to Canada which has average farming of land of 600 acres, Indian agriculturists holding of land is less than 10 acres. As a consequence of this vast difference in extensive use of technology and massive scale of production in agricultural sector has become a problem in India, he said.

Stating that India might face severe food crisis due to agricultural sector growth around 2 per cent whereas population growth is almost the same per year, he said quality of diet in Indian food has also remained a serious problem and this might hamper the Indian economy.

In order to overcome the problem of fragmented and marginal holding of land, he said, there is a need to undertake co-operative farming on an extensive scale in each village or region.