HD apples to mono-cropping: Lessons Kashmir must learn from Punjab, Haryana

Despite the latest Supreme Court move to put on hold implementation of Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, and The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act 2020 – the impasse between farmers of Punjab-Haryana and the union government seems far from over.

Reforms in agriculture sector are need of time because of the various irregularities present in the current system. The main focus of reforms is to increase the farmers’ income and decent standard of living by focussing on remunerative prices to the farmers produce. If we go through the findings of Shanta Kumar (2015) only six per cent of farmers benefit from the MSP regime and stressed the immediate need is reforms in agriculture.

Green revolution in india:

Punjab, Haryana and Western UP adopted it on a larger scale and where it was not feasible, it was supported by the government policies and interventions. Within the span of only 15 years, the country became self sufficient in cereals. Consequently within the span of 15 years, the rice and wheat cropping system covered the entire area of Punjab and Haryana. With this system of mono-cropping, pest outbreak became common which resulted in large scale use of pesticides and with time pests become resistant to employed pesticides and with the result new strains are arising continuously. Free electricity provision has further aggravated the situation resulted in excessive use of ground water.These states are now facing severe shortage of water. The indiscriminate use of chemical fertilizers resulted in severe contamination of ground water and the river bodies. This monocropping system has put the other crops at marginal state despite having higher returns and freindly to soil and environment. They completely negate the pulse crops. The biggest drawback of green revolution was marginalization of pulse crops despite being leguminous crops and adds nitrogen to soil and simultaneously maintains the soil health.

To blame excessive use of pesticides, chemical fertilizers etc is not fair, the current MSP has also played a major role to the prevailing cropping system. To solve and to produce crops in these situations, the cost of cultivation will further scale up. The need of the hour is to diversify the agriculture production system at an earliest.

Lessons for Kashmir: HD apple plantation case

Likewise, our Kashmir valley is also in a hurry. Large number of young orchards are being chopped down (despite being in full bearing potential) by the orchardists to plant High Density Plantations (HDPs). HDP is a good concept but it should not be at the cost of young orchards by ignoring the economics of establishment.

The HDPs are completely new to our prevailing conditions with introduced varieties and are currently performing well both in terms of production and productivity. What will be its cost in future seems same like paddy and wheat cropping in Punjab, i,e use of pesticides and fertilizers and ground water utilization (thanks to drip systems and recharge potential of soil in the valley). There may be chance of pest outbreak in future, as these varieties are introduced with new kind of pests/ resistant strains. Same happened with Punjab and Harayana.

Moreover, the current trend must not put our traditional varieties (famous all over the world for its delicious, tasty and crispiness) in books only. Therefore, HDP is good but not at cost of loosing our traditional varities.

The space between the HDPs must be utilised (inter-cropping) for leguminous crops so, that the soil health can be maintained, less need of nitrogenous fertilizers is needed and at the same time will meet the demand of food insecurity in the valley. This opportunity was completely missed by above mentioned states and resorted to excessive use of herbicides. We should not also repeat the same problem otherwise, the cost of cultivation will only go up.

The economics of supply and demand should also be considered while thinking of HDPs. The HDPs produce is fetching good returns because of demand as the harvesting season coincides with the high demand. While more and more HDPs produce will be there as the trend seems then the fate will be same as that of paddy and wheat produce, more relying on the MSP rather than other avenues.

APMCs

Large scale procurement of agriculture produce is going currently outside the agriculture produce marketing committee (APMC) markets same is the case with our valley. Despite this APMC also suffers from various institutional issues:

Licensing barriers: that has led to monopoly of certain Licensed traders and acts as a major entry barrier to new entrepreneurs in the existing APMCs, thus preventing competition. This has to be borne by the producers thus limiting his increase in income. In this context of increasing competition, removing licensing barriers, marketing outside the APMCs will definitely led to increase in price of produce and consequently led to streamline the institutional issues of APMCs. The e-NAM (electronic-National Agriculture Marketing) in AMPCs is still out of content to farmers of our valley.

One has to be vigilant of various problems and prospects of a particular technology/method /scheme and interventions throughout the country and also across the world. So, necessary amendments can be made accordingly that suits to a particular situation.

The immediate demand of the situation is also adoption of smart agriculture and climate smart agriculture. Moreover, the reforms will invest more in agriculture (lagging from last 2 decades) more cold storage facilities will be there. Also, need of the hour is to educate farmers and various stakeholders involved.

(The writer is Junior Agriculture Extension Officer, Department of Agriculture Production and Farmers Welfare. Views expressed are his own, and not of the institution he works for or Ziraat Times)