Food Security in India: Whether Rational Landuse Policy or Precision Farming is the Answer? Pramod K Singh Institute of Rural Management, Anand, India Email: pramod@irma.ac.in While farmers have done a remarkable job of keeping food on the dinner table so far, it will not be easy for them to feed nearly twice as many mouths by 2050 AD as they do today. The present paper tries to find out solution for this problem. Land is a finite resource and there is a competing and conflicting demand of land in India. National Forest Policy (1988) has enunciated to attain 33 percent of forest cover (20 percent in plain areas and 60 percent in hilly/mountainous areas) in India. Quality of forest is not good in India. Out of 19.5 percent of total forest area only 11.5 percent is dense forest. Per capita forest area is 0.07 ha in India while for world the per capita forest area is 1.08 ha (15 times of the Indian average). Although India has world’s highest cattle population, it has very less pasture land. Besides, drought prone areas and flood prone areas are expanding and good agricultural areas are diverted into built up areas in India. Hence the issues ahead is how to reverse the undesirable pattern of land use and how to resolve the competing and conflicting demands of land in India? However, there is a scope for improving agricultural productivity as India’s agricultural productivity is 15-20 percent of the world’s highest. This requires not only precision farming practices but also rational landuse policy, guided by the compulsions of improving food and nutritional security, concern for environmental protection, self-sufficiency, sustainability, and profitability with the underlying theme of increasing competitiveness and productive efficiency of agriculture. It essentially means a land use model that would step towards a more equitable agrarian structure one that envelope investment in land and therefore lead to gain in productivity and efficiency. The Landuse Policy would essentially require Farm Landuse Policy as well as Forest Landuse Policy as agriculture development in its comprehensive definition is central to all strategies for planned socio-economic development of India and forest is essential component for sustaining the agriculture. Of the reported area, 178 million ha is accounted by net sown area, pasture land and fallow land. There is no scope of future expansion of net sown area as it is already on a higher side. It should be decreased by releasing the marginal lands avoiding further land and soil degradation. Non-diversion of good agricultural land for non-farm use should be ensured through legislation. There is a great need to adopt tailor made location specific technology package with inbuilt risk distribution. Efforts must be made towards integrated approach to enhance better utilization of rain-fed areas which account for about 70% of the cultivated land and can play a key role in meeting future food needs. Striving to convert these gray areas into green areas would form the very basis of ever green revolution. Crop intensification and diversification is inevitable on ecologically sustainable basis. We need to work towards bridging the prevailing gap between potential and actual yields in major farming systems through effective implementation of the approved land reforms measures. There is a great need to develop land capability based cropping pattern and a long term crop and farm management strategies along with precision farming practices. A comprehensive crop policy to tap the vast potential for inter cropping of quick maturing crops with the help of paired row planting, drip irrigation etc and other practices of relay cropping, mixed cropping, crop rotation for the most efficient land use. Field losses needs to be minimized through integrated pest management practices. We should aim at achieving a rapid improvement in post harvesting technology including processing, packaging, storage and marketing and to promote contract cultivation of perishable commodities on the basis of by back arrangements with cooperative sectors. We must seek to blend ancient wisdom (traditional methods) with modern wizardry. Aided by the wisdom of sustainable agriculture and the wonders of precision farming and biotechnology, farmers will have a fighting chance to give us our daily bread even in the future. This demands for people’s participation, an approach to stimulate and encourage both top down and bottom up flow of information between farmers, extension workers and policy makers for promotion, evaluation and adoption of locale specific economically and ecologically viable farming systems. It essentially means ‘think, plan and act locally and support nationally’.