Food for all continues to be a key issue, especially in the developing world where every fifth person is chronically undernourished. India, a fast growing developing country has also experienced serious food shortages for example in the mid 1960s. Punjab, a small northern Indian state has developed, particularly since the Green Revolution in the mid 1960s, to be a key agricultural area producing 13% of the food grains of India. Increased productivity brought economic benefits to farmers and led to the establishment of Wheat-Rice Cropping Pattern (WRCP) as the main agricultural system of Punjab which more recently has become reliant on underground water resources, agricultural machinery, chemical fertilisers and pesticides. More recently stagnating yields... |