Lack of funds put agriculture scientists out of a job

The International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics at Patencheru, about 40 km from Hyderabad, hit by a lack of funds, is downsizing its staff by 30 per cent to save around 1.65 million US dollars.

The ICRISAT will have to get rid of about 390 employees, including 20 international scientists with whom it had not renewed its contract, sources said.

With increased globalisation, donor countries were insisting on returns from their investment in the ICRISAT through greater involvement of private sector and the non-governmental organisations.

ICRISAT's budget for 1997 has already been slashed from $ 29 million in 1996 to $ 27.5 million, which includes an additional $ 1.4 million provided by the World Bank from its reserves. With all the 16 institutes, including ICRISAT, under the Consultative Group for Institutes of Agriculture Research, forming barely nine per cent of the investment for agricultural research in the world ICRISAT has decided to reschedule its operations with new strategic sets of objectives, ICRISAT's outgoing director-general Dr James C Ryan admitted at a recent news conference.

CGIAR's total funding was likely to be only around $ 325 million during 1997, a reduction of $ 14 million from the previous year. European donors, including France and Germany, were apparently refashioning their budgets after the Maastricht treaty. "The difficulty is that we are not absolutely sure about the donors, though we are just six months away from 1998, the first year of the mid-term plan that ends in 2002," Dr Ryan said.

The problem was that the transnational seed corporation which had made a huge investment, running into billions of dollars, were not interested in investing in crops with little profit because investment in biotechnology was a very costly affair, ICRISAT scientists pointed out.

ICRISAT, as mandated, was to work for the improvement of sorghum (jowar) and pearl millet (bajra), the major food and fooder in the semi-arid tropics spread over the sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia, including some of the poorest countries in the world. Besides, ICRISAT was to work on the development of finger millet, chickpea, pigeon pea and ground nut.

The major seed corporations were focussing on investment in biotechnology for the improvement of wheat and maize crops becaus the profit margins were very high there. Consequently, the use of biotechnology for the five crops being worked by institutes like ICRISAT was neglected, the scientists said.

ICRISAT had in the new globalised situation decided to increase its working arrangements with the advanced institutes in the developed countries and through association of their scientists to inject the necessary element of biotech research for the semi-arid crops.

However, ICRISAT scientists cautioned that the big seed companies were trying to create an illusion that biotech applications could do magic to the overall availability of food. This is something misleading as biotech is only another additional tool to improve food and seed output, they said.

UNI