Denying a child even at birth an opportunity for the full expression of its innate genetic potential for physical and mental development is the cruellest form of inequity.
M. S. SwaminathanRead
Agriculture is the backbone of the livelihood security system of nearly 700 million people in the country and we need to build our food security on the foundation of home grown food.
Interpretation
Agriculture is essential for the livelihood of millions, and we must prioritize local food production for security.
M. S. Swaminathan emphasizes the critical role of agriculture in ensuring the livelihood and food security of a vast population. He underscores the importance of developing a self-sufficient food system reliant on locally grown food, suggesting that sustainable practices in agriculture are vital for the well-being of the community.
In practice
During a speech on national agricultural policies, one might quote this to highlight the importance of local food production.
Denying a child even at birth an opportunity for the full expression of its innate genetic potential for physical and mental development is the cruellest form of inequity.
In spite of the dominant role played by women in both farming, they are denied credit as they lack land titles. Only a small percentage of Kisan Credit Cards goes to them.
There are two major challenges before Indian agriculture today: ecological and economical. The conservation of our basic agricultural assets such as land, water, and biodiversity is a major challenge. How to make agriculture sustainable is the challenge.
Farming is the riskiest profession in the world since the fate of the crop is closely linked to the behaviour of the monsoon.
Without the wholehearted involvement of farmers, particularly of young as well as women farmers, it will be impossible to implement a Food Entitlements Act in an era of increasing price volatility in the international market.
After the Green Revolution, I came up with the concept of the Evergreen Revolution. In this we will see increase in farm productivity but without ecological harm.
Thanks to farm subsidies, the fine collaboration between agribusiness and Congress, soy, corn and cattle became king. And chicken soon joined them on the throne. It was during this period that the cycle of dietary and planetary destruction began, the thing we're only realizing just now.
Still, it is an error to argue in front of your data. You find yourself insensibly twisting them round to fit your theories.
It is the very strangeness of nature that makes science engrossing. That ought to be at the center of science teaching. There are more than seven-times-seven types of ambiguity in science, awaiting analysis. The poetry of Wallace Stevens is crystal-clear alongside the genetic code.
The imposing edifice of science provides a challenging view of what can be achieved by the accumulation of many small efforts in a steady objective and dedicated search for truth.
The upshot of all this is that we live in a universe whose age we can't quite compute, surrounded by stars whose distances we don't altogether know, filled with matter we can't identify, operating in conformance with physical laws whose properties we don’t truly understand.
Evolution, thus, is merely contingent on certain processes articulated by Darwin: variation and selection. No longer is a fixed object transformed, as in transformational evolution, but an entirely new start is, so to speak, made in every generation.
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