Inaugurating the three-day international symposium on sustainable hill agriculture here, he said male out-migration had placed enormous burden of sustaining hill agriculture on women farmers who found little support. ``They are neglected and outrightly rejected by many agricultural development organisations'', he noted. The director General said commercial agriculture was spreading fast and earning lot of income to farmers but it also resulted in reduced agro bio-diversity and loss of gene agricultural commodity markets.

Pelinck opined that it was not the resilience of hill farmers that had been wanting, ``the real gaps have been in the development and expansion of critical support services, transfer of knowledge and skills from laboratories to land,'' he observed.

The symposium is being organised by the Himachal Pradesh Agriculture University in collaboration with Hisar-based international society for sustainable agriculture. As many as 351 scientists have registered their participation.

Presiding over the symposium, Dr Mangla Rai, ADG (Crops), ICAR, said if during the first five decades after independence, physical access to food had been the most important challenge, economic access to food had now become the concern of all concerned.

He said in the 21st century ecological access to food might become the most important challenge owing to the damage now being done to land, water, flora and fauna.

He lauded the role of national academy of research sciences in making the country both self-sufficient in food grains and a potential exporter of agricultural commodities. However, he cautioned that selectivity and priorities of research should be crystal clear to the policy makers so that only useful research was undertaken.

Dr Rai said the state agricultural universities must take up their own research programmes commensurate with their regional needs. Ensuring food security may remain unaccomplished dream unless issues like poverty and population are simultaneously addressed, he said. In such a situation it has to be ensured that ecology and conservation do not work against the interest of the poor while Organising secretary of the symposium, Dr A C Kapoor said the scientists would deliberate on the objectives: (1) to assess the current status of agriculture in hills (11) to identify relevant technologies and alternate land use system for sustainable agricultural production (111) to establish linkages among scientists and development functionaries for collaborative projects in hill agriculture in international perspective and (1V) to plan long term strategies and to develop technologies suitable for hill agriculture.