Diversify Indian agriculture, says top official

Indian agriculture will grow at a steady pace only if farmers agree to diversify crops, a senior central government official said Monday.

"The road ahead is diversification," Ashok Gulati, who heads the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Pricing (CACP), told the Vibrant Gujarat Global Agricultural Summit here.

"We also need value addition," he said. "What is needed is high value agriculture."

Saying India was now producing enough food to feed its 1.2 billion people, Gulati said the present problem was one of over production.

"There is so much foodgrain that we don't know where to keep them."

He said India's milk output, now at 132 million tonnes, would shoot up to 175-200 tonnes in just 10 more years.

Gulati paid special tribute to agricultural growth in Gujarat, saying production in the state was growing by 10 percent unlike a poor national average.

"This is nothing less than a miracle."