Chandigarh/Bengaluru, July 15:
The Punjab Agriculture Minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal today personally handed over a letter to Union Agriculture Minister Narinder Singh Tomar to impress upon the Union Government to take the farmers of the state out of the debt trap, wheat-paddy cycle and promote crop diversification besides fruit and vegetable farming.
He has demanded financial package for curbing the trend of stubble burning, reducing the hardships of border area farmers and saving water in agriculture and using modern tools to protect against pest attacks. Apart from this, it has also been demanded to open the export of agricultural and horticultural products to the Middle East so as to expand the income of farmers of the state.
Mr. Dhaliwal attended the National Conference of Agriculture and Horticulture Ministers of the states at Bengaluru, where he met the Union Agriculture Minister personally and demanded financial relief for the farmers of the state.
Mr. Dhaliwal has written in his letter that an average farmer feels he is in a debt trap, as his present income if at all is able to pay the interest. As Punjab is a border state, Pakistan is always on a look out for vulnerabilities of the large farming population of the state further weaken it by promoting drugs and miitancy. It is therefore requested that as a one time measure a debt waiver fund should be given to the state, mentioned the Minister in his letter.
The letter further reads that farmers of the 14000 acres in the 150 feet wide 425 km long belt across the fence along border should be compensated for the adverse conditions imposed on them. They can work only 10am to 4pm and can’t grow crops higher than 3 feet. Therefore they should be compensated with Rs. 15000 per acre per year.
Punjab has fed food grains, wheat and rice to nation in last four decades of scarcity. In the process the soil formed over thousands of years has been stripped of its rich nutrients and the underground aquifers have got depleted to alarming levels. The State will have no water to draw in 15 to 20 years. The Government of India (GoI) should, as a moral duty, set up an adequate corpus to help the farmer in the state to diversify, to water conserving and high value crops over the next decade, like – cotton, pulses, fruits, vegetables, sugarcane, oilseeds. The corpus should have 2 components – one to hand hold the farmer to come out of Paddy-Wheat cycle and second to upgrade the level of research in Punjab Agriculture University, Ludhiana.
With just about 15 days between harvesting of paddy and sowing of wheat, burning Paddy stubble is more of a necessity than habit of the farmer. A Farmer needs to be given Rs.2500 per acre to enable him to incorporate the stubble mechanically with farm equipment. For 75 lac acre under Paddy, GoI is requested to give Rs.1125 crore annually for the purpose to the state.
Infusion of Artificial Intelligence is the need of the hour to guide farmer in controlling watering, addition of fertiizer, use of drones, in picking fruit and to keep an eye on pests. This requires investment in mapping the land parcels accurately, installing sensors in soil and in drones and other software and hardware. Similarly precision agriculture, in green houses, vertical agriculture and hydroponics are now widely practiced in Israel and other developed nations and can prove saviours for the small farmer of the state. A fund of at least Rs. 300 crore per year over the next decade will help bring about the change.
To promote growing of fruit and vegetables, farmers need a cold chain of warehouses and trucks/vehicles. Rs.1000 crore corpus to begin with, will go a long way to help state diversify.
Lastly, opening trade of Agricutural and Horticulure products with Pakistan, Iran and Middle East will greatly help state’s economy.
