While the forward looking Vision-2020 document of Andhra Pradesh government has considered agriculture as a growth engine, its recently announced Biotechnology Policy-2001 has recognised that there are apprehensions of agricultural productivity plateauing and the food production growth falling behind the population growth. The recognition of this, as well as the state government’s concerns on the policy initiatives benefiting the lower sections of the economic strata, lend a lot of significance and seriousness to the new policy.

According to the policy only biotechnology in conjugation with conventional breeding technology can help in increasing yields dramatically through new plant varieties, resistant to environmental stress and pests, in lowering the cost of agricultural inputs, including labour, in improving nutritional values of food crops and in producing environmentally benign weed and insect management.

Agriculture has been reiterated by the policy as the lifeline and that it is providing livelihood to 70 per cent of the population of the state, while contributing about a third of the state’s gross domestic product. According to the state chief minister, N Chandrababu Naidu, “ Biotechnology can benefit in several ways all sections of the society but more so the very poor, by increasing the availability of food grains, by eliminating the use of harmful pesticides as well as by improving the quality of livestock."

THE POTENTIAL

All successful marketing depend upon identifying the need as satisfying it. The state has the need for better technologies, the large scope for application given the adaptability of the farmers, the really diverse bio-resources and the government willing to be a facilitator.

The biodiversity, albeit in a limited commercial sense, needs a mention. The state is the second largest producer of fruits and one of the largest vegetable producing states in the country. Further it is a leading producer of several cash crops such as tobacco, oilseeds, cotton, sugarcane, cashew, mesta, turmeric and chillies. Andhra Pradesh is the second largest producer of silkworm cocoons in the country, has the largest breedable bovine population and accounts for 40 per cent of fish exports.

The state has earned the reputation of being the seed capital of India. The enterprising farmers here grow seeds for government and private seed companies, for their use in various parts of the country. Interestingly, though jute is not grown for the fibre in the state in any significant way, it is grown for seeds. These seeds are used in West Bengal, where jute is a major fibre crop.

The policy has made no attempts at quantifying the possible economic benefits to the state or the possible size of the agricultural biotech industry. But, it has noted that the estimated economic benefits from growing genetically improved crops in the US and Canada was about US$500 million in 1998 and that it is expected to increase dramatically to $6 billion by the year 2005.

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