To encourage farmers in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh to shift from water-intensive rice crops, the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) has really helpful the capping of the prevailing open-ended paddy procurement coverage and specializing in purchases from solely small and marginal farmers.
“In order to nudge farmers towards diversifying their cropping pattern while maintaining food security, targeted procurement of paddy may be initiated,” CACP has acknowledged in its report on worth coverage for Kharif crops (2022-23) season. Based on the CACP experiences, the federal government fixes MSP for 23 crops.
The fee has acknowledged that paddy buy could also be continued for small and marginal farmers whereas for all different classes of the farmers, the procurement could also be restricted to surplus emanating from solely two hectares of land every.
“This would entail sufficient stock for maintaining food security, promoting diversification while protecting the interest of more than 90% of the farmers,” it acknowledged.
Because of the open-ended procurement coverage, between the 2017-18 and 2020-21 seasons (October-September), rice purchases by the Food Corporation of India (FCI) and state authorities companies rose greater than 57% to 60.17 million tonne (MT) from 38.17 MT. In the present 12 months, greater than 55.35 MT of rice has been bought by companies from farmers up to now.
As of June 1, 2022, FCI had a rice inventory of 32.53 MT in opposition to the buffer inventory norm of 13.54 MT for July 1. This inventory excludes about 16.55 MT of rice receivable from millers.
On the necessity for crop diversification, CACP has acknowledged that dependence on rice-wheat cropping techniques in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh has resulted in depletion of groundwater and deterioration of soil high quality, posing a severe problem to its sustainability.
“On the other hand, states like Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Bihar and Assam can be encouraged for rice production owing to their sustainability in terms of land as well as water productivity,” the fee mentioned.
The authorities had launched a crop diversification programme in 2013-14 to shift areas below paddy to different various crops, particularly within the Green Revolution states. Besides, Haryana had launched a crop diversification scheme in 2020-21, the farmers got a grant of Rs 7,000 per acre as an incentive to cut back the world below paddy and promote maize, cotton, oilseed, pulses, onion and so forth.
“Not much progress has been made so far on crop diversification in the region because of low returns and high risks from alternative crops, lack of assured marketing and remunerative prices, non-availability of appropriate proven technology for alternative crops,” CACP has acknowledged.
The fee has really helpful selling and incentivising effectivity in water use in agriculture by fixing quantitative ceilings on using water and electrical energy per hectare and rewarding farmers for adopting water-saving applied sciences.
To attain out to extra farmers and guarantee MSP procurement, the fee has instructed various measures like linking farmers to the agricultural commodity by-product market could also be executed within the close to time period.
Source: www.financialexpress.com”