Mr. Raju Barwale is leading Mahyco, a well-known innovative seed company in India as Managing Director. The company is the flagship concern of the Barwale Group and was founded in 1964 by Dr. B. R. Barwale, who is widely regarded as the Father of the Indian seed industry. While Dr. Barwale laid a strong foundation for Mahyco with his visionary leadership, under the stewardship of Mr. Raju Barwale, the company expanded rapidly to reach and make a difference to the lives of over 10 million farming families out of an estimated 110 million farming families in the country, over last four decades of his association. Today, Mahyco enjoys the trust and confidence of its customers for quality and innovative seeds.
Mr. Barwale has pioneered in bringing in the best of the technologies in seeds to Indian Agriculture. Thanks to his persuasive leadership, Mahyco introduced India's first Biotech crop Bt Cotton, in collaboration with Monsanto in 2002, helping the country to become the global leader in cotton production and exports. In keeping with the strong belief of the company in applying science and technology for resolution of challenges facing Indian Agriculture, Mr. Barwale has built a research and development facility of global standards with several innovative technology solutions being worked upon and which are in various phases of regulatory evaluation.
ET: India is still largely an Agricultural economy and experts argue that our Agricultural productivity is sub-optimal. What are your thoughts in this regard? And, if you agree with this view, what can be done to raise farm productivity?
RB: Agriculture continues to be the mainstay of India, even after close to seven decades of Independence. While its contribution to overall GDP has come down to less than 14%, the fact that it employs close to 50% of our population makes it critical for equitable distribution of economic development and growth. For the same reason, growth of Agriculture is vital for the growth of many other sectors of the economy.
Our Agricultural production has improved over the years, making us the global leading producer of some of the Agricultural products like milk, cotton, tea, rice, fruits and vegetables, etc. However, our productivity in most crops are lower than the global averages, thus providing an opportunity to increase our production further. For instance, our rice productivity per hectare is 3,623 kgs compared to 6,717 kgs in China. Our wheat productivity per hectare is 3,154 kgs compared to 6,668 kgs in China. In cotton, it is about 540 kgs of lint per hectare compared to 1,900 kgs per hectare in Australia.
We are naturally endowed with the second largest arable land in the world and abundant sunshine through the year. Hence, our Agricultural productivity can be improved substantially, if we adopt optimum use of modern inputs and good Agricultural practices. We need to increase the area under irrigation both through expansion of irrigated areas and improving efficiency, which will help us to minimise our dependence on the monsoons. This should be supported by adequate market and policy infrastructure to help farmers realise remunerative prices for their produce, thereby incentivising the farmers to produce more.
ET: As a leading firm that has played a large part in raising Agricultural incomes across India with multiple offerings of hybrid seeds, what has been your experience with the Indian farmer? How open is he to new methods of farming, use of technology, mechanisation, storage, etc.?
RB: The Indian farmer is very worldly wise and has therefore, adopted modern technologies/methods/practices that enhance yields and income. However, he is very cautious in nature and very good at managing risks - risks of unpredictable weather, crop failures, markets and prices, etc. In other words, he evaluates risks and rewards carefully while adopting new technologies. Let me share two examples. In case of cotton, Bt cotton was adopted by over 90% of the cotton growing farmers, (which is a global record for the fastest technology adoption) as they were convinced about the effectiveness of the technology and its impact on economics after evaluation in the initial years. However, in case of hybrid rice, inspite of heavy governmental support in the form of subsidised seed prices, adoption is less than 5% even after two decades of efforts. The reason is farmers' perception of additional income/rewards vis-a-vis produce price risks, etc. is not favourable. As the industry understands the needs of the farmers better, with improved product offerings to meet their needs, the use can go up in the coming years.
ET: Why is the subject of genetically modified foods so polarising amongst policy makers & lay public when we have accepted the role of science in all other spheres of our existence?
RB: Genetically modified food evokes polarised debates all over the world. In my view, there are two key reasons for this. One is due to inadequate/mis-communication about the safety and efficacy of crop bio-technology. Safety of crop bio-technology on a scientific basis is a settled matter. There are over 2,000 scientific research papers available about the safety aspects of crop biotech and the world's leading scientific bodies have endorsed their safety. Since, over two decades of introduction of biotech crops in the world, more than a trillion meals containing biotech food have been consumed without a single documented case of adverse effects. However, there are certain interested sections amongst the civil society groups who would like to perpetuate this misconception about its safety. This needs to be countered with adequate communication, particularly from publicly credible sources like the Government.
Another reason for the opposition is ideological. Certain groups consider this act as playing God and oppose it while some groups do not want to adopt Agricultural technologies from another country or from an MNC. In today's global world, we are happily accepting modern technologies from other countries in information technology, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, automobile industry, FMCG, etc., including the defence sector. It is intriguing as to why Indian farmers are being denied access to modern technologies on the basis of such ideologies. Even during the Green Revolution, we accepted the Mexican dwarf gene in wheat and improved rice varieties from the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Manila, for improving our food grain productivity. Today, Agricultural commodity markets are globally linked. It is not in the economic interest of our farmers to deny tools of productivity improvements to him, while it is available to farmers elsewhere in the world, to ensure competitiveness and profitability of our farmers.
ET: Research & Development (R&D) is vital to every sector's growth. How intense is the private sector's R&D efforts in the Agricultural sector or is the primary role played by government research institutions still?
RB: Agriculture is vital for the social and economic well-being of our nation and ensuring food security for our population. Therefore, it is vital that both public and private sectors participate in the R&D efforts to improve crop productivities vigorously. The private sector works closely with various Government institutions to take the fruits of such R&D efforts to farms.
For the private sector to invest more into crop research there has to be increased levels of encouragement from the policy makers. The Agricultural sector is highly regulated, and therefore, entails relatively higher risks in terms of regulatory uncertainties and decision making. If the policy environment and the regulatory road maps are predictable, it will help to attract greater investments in R&D in this sector.
ET: Your company Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company (Mahyco) began operations way back in the 1960s and since then has come a long way, and has now gone overseas as well. What have been the major turning points in the company's history?
RB: Dr. Barwale, my father who started the company in 1964 believed that crop productivity improvements could be achieved through the application of science in Agriculture. This has been our core belief since then. Thus, we have always aimed to leverage technology to bring innovative and high yielding products to Indian farmers. Mahyco has been the first Indian company to introduce hybrid seeds for sorghum, pearl millet, sunflower, cotton (GMS/CMS based), and several vegetable crops. We also have the distinction of successfully developing and commercialising the world's first CMS based wheat hybrid in 1996.
Another important milestone was the successful introduction of Bt cotton, India's first and only Biotech crop in 2002. We are proud of the fact that this technology enabled India to become the second largest global exporter of cotton from being a net importer prior to its introduction. India's share in global production of cotton has gone up from 12% in 2002 to 25% in 2014. What is more fulfilling for us is that over seven million farming families, most of them being small and marginal farmers, have benefitted immensely by the use of this technology. We have several such new technologies - water use efficiency crops, nutrient use efficiency crops, insect tolerant crops, etc., which can potentially deliver similar benefits to our farmers. Besides, there are technologies available which can have a dramatic impact on the production of pulses and oilseeds in the country. We are optimistic that our policy makers will facilitate introduction of such technologies sooner than later, in the larger interest of Indian Agriculture.
We have started to expand beyond India, into South East Asia and Africa, a couple of years back. We would like to take our experience and knowledge of the hybrid seed business to those geographies for the benefit of farmers there, where farmer profiles and farming challenges are comparable. We believe that such experiences outside the country would also help us learn from their experiences which can be used in India. We would expect substantial future growth of Mahyco to come from such overseas expansion, apart from growth in our Indian operations.
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