Though the country has attained self-sufficiency in food grains, CM Siddaramaiah said ,still the onus of feeding 140 crore population is on both Central and State Governments. When the “green revolution” took place in the country, the chemical fertilisers gained importance to increase yields but now the shift is towards organic farming.
Asking Vice-Chancellors of various agriculture varsities, Siddaramaiah to develop new varieties of crops to suit climatic conditions so that farmers can get benefits and stated that 60 percent of population still dependent on agriculture and the number has come down from 80 percent to present 60 percent owing to urbanisation.
Siddha observed that the population depending on agriculture might come down in coming years and wanted research to be done on growing multiple crops to make farming sustainable for farmers.
To encourage organic farming, he said Karnataka came up with Organic Agriculture Policy-2004 and later Revised Organic Agriculture Policy-2014 thereby laid emphasis on organic millets and many scientists have opined that organic millets are good for health.
