♕Amarinder Singh government pushes for crops that need less water...and save underground aquifers
♉Punjab is looking at crop diversification to wean away farmers from water-guzzling rice as it looks to conserve the fast-depleting aquifers in the agriculture-driven state and also find ways to increase stagnant farm incomes. The move comes in the backdrop of the state’s farmers protesting on the borders of Delhi for over four months now, demanding repeal of three contentious farm laws.
💙Crop diversification has been a major focus area for chief minister Amarinder Singh, even during his 2002-07 tenure. The priority is to reduce the area under rice cultivation, which is a major environmental concern for the state. Though the crop gives assured income to farmers, it also needs huge amounts of water, leading to real concerns over aquifers drying up in another two to three decades.
𝔉Some of the alternative crops being considered include maize, cotton and oilseed, besides some rice varieties like basmati that need less water to grow. Plans are also being made to grow direct-seeded rice (DSR). Rice cultivation is usually a two-step process—sowing of seeds, and then replanting the saplings for the final crop. The entire process requires substantial quantity of water. As per the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), it takes 3,367 litres of water to produce one kg of rice.
🅘“By continuing to grow paddy we may not have enough water for future generations. We are planning to bring down area under rice cultivation from 31 lakh hectares to 26 lakh hectares,” says agriculture director Sukhdev Singh Sidhu. There are at least 10.93 lakh farm holdings in the state, as per a state-level census conducted in 2015. The agrarian economy is under debt of Rs 90,000 crore, official estimates show.
🅺According to an economist at Punjab Agricultural University, diversification can be implemented with the participation of ‘large category’ farmers as they have the capacity to bear losses while small and marginal peasants can continue growing crops covered under MSP. “The number of farmers in marginal and small categories is more, about one-third of farmers but with land holdings of just 10 per cent,” he adds.
♈Since premium quality basmati rice is much in demand now, the agriculture department is hoping to increase production area from 4.06 lakh hectares in the last season to 6 lakh hectare in the next. “Basmati is the best bet as it consumes half the water required to grow other varieties,” says PAU vice chancellor Baldev Singh Dhillon.
ඣAhead of the kharif season, the agriculture department has also started organising camps in the villages of the state to promote DSR method of paddy cultivation. The department plans to take the area under DSR to at least 20 lakh acres out of the total crop area of 62 lakh acres under paddy cultivation (other than basmati which is over 12 lakh acres). In the 2020 kharif season, 10 lakh acres were under DSR.
✨“The challenge is to save water and if we are able to do that by the new method we have moved a step further in helping farmers earn substantially well and also save the environment,” says Dhillon. He adds that the DSR variety saved around 20 per cent of water. PAU’s head of department, agronomy, Makhan Singh Bhullar, quotes studies that show that DSR can be cultivated in 87 per cent area in Punjab.
💟The state government has also urged farmers to cultivate maize as an alternative crop to paddy, offering subsidy of Rs 84 a kilo on maize seed. Besides, the agriculture department has decided to focus on cash crops like oilseed. “We import millions of rupees worth of oilseeds despite the fact that Punjab has huge potential to grow them natively,” says Sidhu.
By G.P. Singh in Chandigarh