Shortage of skilled workers may slow India's bio-agri solutions push, says Agriculture Commissioner

New Delhi: India's ambitious plan to scale up biological farm inputs – from bio-stimulants to bio-pesticides – could suffer a setback due to shortage of trained manpower, Agriculture Commissioner PK Singh said on Wednesday, calling for urgent skill-development measures to support the growing bio-manufacturing sector.

Addressing an event organised by industry body BASAI, Singh said the workforce currently employed in chemical fertiliser and pesticide production cannot simply be redeployed to biological plants.

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"Chemical engineers may not automatically have the expertise required for biological distillation or fermentation systems," he said, describing this as a structural gap that needs to be addressed before India's bio-solutions ambitions can be realised at scale.

The Commissioner said the government now needs to work out, in granular detail, what kind of workforce the sector will require – how many engineers, technicians and support staff, what their training modules should look like, and which institutions ought to offer these courses.

He said this should span diploma, degree, postgraduate and doctoral levels, with academic bodies and Deans' Committees expected to design curricula accordingly, feeding eventually into decisions made by principal secretaries and principal scientific advisors at the state and central level.

"These are not theoretical questions. Many policy forums have raised them," Singh said, drawing a comparison with how India organised training pipelines for artificial intelligence skills in recent years – an exercise he suggested could serve as a template for the bio-sector.

The manpower concern comes even as India ramps up its broader push into natural and regenerative farming, an area Singh said is drawing increasing attention from countries that import Indian agricultural produce.

"Importing countries are paying attention to India's move toward organic and natural farming," he said.

Singh said India has been promoting regenerative agriculture within the BRICS grouping, and discussions are underway to set up an international hub in the country for such efforts.

He noted that organic farming alone had struggled to scale in the past due to difficulties in delivering adequate organic matter, with farmers often reverting to chemical inputs during pest attacks or crop stress.

On the scale of the opportunity, Singh said India's roughly 14 crore farmers could collectively generate demand for 20-30 crore tonnes of bio-inputs annually if adoption reached 2 to 2.5 tonnes per hectare, a figure far above current production and procurement levels.

He said schemes such as the Khet Bachao Abhiyan (Save soil) initiative, had already reached 80 lakh farmers within a month of its launch, evidence, he said, of the latent demand waiting to be tapped.

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Government missions covering pulses, cotton and oilseeds have now been redesigned to emphasise need-based bio-solutions rather than routine chemical application, Singh said, with industry bodies such as SFIA (Soluble Fertilizer Industry Association) and BASAI supporting the transition on the ground.

Singh also cautioned against India's tendency to treat soil and water conservation as an emergency, "firefighting" measures, cleaning drains and harvesting rainwater when El Nino-linked dry spells loom, only to let the practices lapse once rains return.

He said such measures needed to become routine rather than reactive, alongside long-term soil health management.

He said proper regulatory classification of bio-products – ensuring bio-stimulants and bio-pesticides are categorised correctly – would be essential to their adoption and marketing.

India's agri-biologicals market is currently estimated to be USD 1.06 billion, with bio-pesticides having a major share.

Biological Agri Solutions Association of India (BASAI) CEO Vipin Saini, IPL Biologicals President Harshvardhan Baghchandka were among other officials present at the event.

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