Pest Problems in India-Current Status

Abstract

The green revolution in India has led to a quantumjump in agricultural production thereby placing domestic food availability in comfortable position as regards of domestic food demand. However, the expected population of 11, 000 million by 2050 is bound to cause pressure on available arable land causing the reduction in per capita availability of land which will decline to 0.22 ha. by 2000 AD and 0.13 ha. by 2050 from the present 0.3 ha. In order to achieve higher food targets, much of the land including barren land has already been converted to arable land leavingno scope for increasing it or going in for deforestation. However, we need to raise our productivity to the level of 2 tonnes/ha. in order to meet the target of 240 million tonnes by 2000 AD. In present crisis the best strategy would be to reduce the enormous losses caused by various pests which on an average totals to 33%. In the present paper the current pest problems and the changing scenario are discussed.