The Achievements And Limitations Of Technological Transfer Economics Essay
Introduction
The fact that food is one of the basic needs of world population needs no referencing. In the early times, increase in the production of crop was due to increase in the area of cultivation but in today’s era, scenario has changed. The production of agricultural products is increased with the increase in the productivity of the land (per acre or per hectare). The system of agricultural production has undergone a drastic change from the basis of natural resources to scientific bases, which involved technology revolution in the agricultural sector. The traditional variety of seeds was not able to yield maximum productivity from the land with dependence on uncertain climatic conditions, which resulted in disastrous situation like famine (Freebairn, 1995). On the other side, government also moved focus from agro-based economy to industrial based economy. This shifted the labor force from crop production to industrial goods production and resulted in low productivity of agriculture with the increase in population worldwide.
The biggest technological revolution in the history of agriculture in developing countries was High Yielding Varieties (HYV) of seeds with the help of various institutions and federations, particularly International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines in 1960 and International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (IMWIC) in Mexico in 1967. These new seeds increased the productivity of land quantitatively as well as qualitatively by enabling to produce 2-3 crops per year (Hazarika, 2002). By 1982-83 more than half of the area of cultivation of wheat and rice in developing countries including India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Thailand, Sri Lanka was adopted through these high yielding varieties of seeds (Dalrymple, 1985; Basu, 2009). India introduced these hybrid seeds in 1961 named ‘Green Revolution’ with the help of government, adopting new...