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Comment by brmgb | Hacker News Reader

I expect the trend to continue and get worse. India is on the verge of having serious issue with its food supply. To keep its share of importation stable, given the current population growth, the country needs its production to grow by 20% (by weight) in the next 25 years. That’s basically a bit more than 1% a year. The potential is definitely there but as far as I know the growth has been slightly under target for the past few years. I fully expect imports to rise and exports to be banned more and more often for the foreseeable future. Famine is unlikely but definitely a risk.

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Indian agriculture is run as a jobs programme. If it modernised production, there is plenty of room for efficiency gains.

A lot of farming indians are extremely untrustworthy of "modernization" of farming because it means near total reliance on American megacorps that already abuse american farmers, let alone people in an entirely separate country with even lower means.

One, that’s totally untrue. Tractors, for instance, have nothing to do with American mega corps.

Two, whatever, the reasons manufactured to keep productivity low are irrelevant. The sector is being run inefficiently to keep a surplus of farmers employed. High food costs are a political choice.

This comment is so funny it's almost satire. Look at John deere to see how fun tractors can be.

> Look at John deere to see how fun tractors can be

Does John Deere have a global monopoly? Resisting modernisation because John Deere are dicks is textbook misdirection.

(Out of the top-ten selling tractors in India, John Deere has one—the 5510–on the list.)

It fortunately doesn't have a monopoly because Indias farmers are smarter then US farmers. That is independent of the fact that John Deere equipment is basically the highest tech you can get.

> doesn't have a monopoly because Indias farmers are smarter then US farmers

Still totally wrong. John Deere is a top-selling tractor, but it’s far from a monopoly. It’s optimised for large farms; with its technological supremacy it lets high labour cost American farms beat emerging-market farms on cost per calorie. Deere & Company has a power imbalance with small farmers, but nobody is forced to buy their tractors.

Sounds like you are saying that after a liberalization in attitudes toward modern farming, most Indian farmers wouldn't have to choose John Deere, only the Indian mega farms that would under cut them on price per calorie would have to?

Ironically, there’s some Indian tractor brands that sell well in the US (and are quite good bang for the buck).

There definitely is. I don’t think it’s impossible at all. That’s what I meant by: “The potential is definitely there”. But mismanagement until it is too late is definitely a risk. The country should be able to solve that with some imports provided it wants to.

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