By IANS,
New Delhi: Ahead of US President Barack Obama’s maiden visit here, the US has decided to intensify bilateral strategic cooperation in agriculture and food security to spur a second Green Revolution in India.
The two sides held their inaugural two-day agriculture dialogue here that ended Tuesday. Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao co-chaired the dialogue with Robert Hormats, under secretary (energy, economic and agricultural affairs) in the US State Department.
A day later, Rao left for the US.
“The working groups discussed proposals for cooperation and will finalise the specific initiatives and modalities for cooperation through mutual consultation,” the external affairs ministry said here.
The two sides have set up set-up three working groups for strategic cooperation in agriculture and food security, food-processing, agriculture extension, farm-to-market linkages and weather and crop-forecasting.
The two sides will discuss steps to accelerate agricultural cooperation during delegation-level talks when Obama comes on his maiden visit to India early November.
The US sees India as key to solving global agricultural challenges. “India will play a vitally important role in solving these kinds of challenges, not only for India, but for the region and the world,” State Department spokesperson P.J. Crowley said in Washington early this week.
He underlined that that the US would certainly want to see how they might be able to work collaboratively on a Green Revolution 2.0.