Paddy cultivation calls for State intervention
Source: The Sangai Express
Imphal, November 13 2020:
Paddy cultivation in the State has landed in such a precarious condition that it needs immediate intervention of the Government otherwise the State may face acute shortage of rice which is the staple food of the vast majority of its population.
Farmers and agriculture experts said that paddy cultivation takes five to six months.
Cultivation of paddy over an area of one sangam needs an investment of around Rs 25,000 .
When the farmer sells the yield of one sangam, he gets a profit of just Rs 16,000 .
In another word, the income of a farmer from selling paddy after toiling for five/six months is too meagre.
In the process of cultivating paddy over an area of one sangam, a farmer has to spend Rs 2400 for tilling, Rs 3200 for transplantation, another Rs 3200 for weeding, Rs 2000 on fertilizers, Rs 1500 on pesticides/weedicides, Rs 3600 on harvesting, Rs 2500 for stacking harvested crop, Rs 2800 for threshing with machine and Rs 1200 on bringing paddy sacks till the farmers' home.
Thus, the cumulative amount a farmer has to spend in cultivating paddy over an area of one sangam comes to around Rs 23000 .
Majority of the people engaged in paddy cultivation in the State are tenants who do not own paddy fields.
Many of them who do not have money in hand to meet the requirements of paddy cultivation borrow money and they pay it back with interest either in cash or kind (paddy), said the farmers and experts.
Most of the time, farmers have to struggle hard.
They do not get required quantity of fertilizers at the right time at subsidised rates.
On account of the global climate change, pests are be- coming quite common in the State.
At one point of time, Agriculture Department used to provide pesticides and weedicides to farmers at subsidised rates but these days, no subsidised weedicide or pesticide is available.
Left with no other option, farmers are compelled to buy pesticides and weedicides at the given MRPs.
Farmers have to struggle really hard to get one bag of Urea in a year.
It has been common knowledge how Urea has been transformed into a lucrative trade item over the years by some cliques or syndicates, said the farmers.
The price of one bag of DAP reached Rs 1750 to Rs 1800 this kharif season.
Likewise one bag of Potash was sold at the exorbitant rate of Rs 1200.Starting from the stage of sowing seeds for transplantation till the stage of harvesting, farmers are always occupied with a sense of uneasiness.
Sometimes they worry about inadequate rainfall, sometimes about excess rainfall, sometimes about unavailability of fertilizers and sometimes about sudden attack by pests.
After overcoming all these odds, now farmers have started harvesting paddy but very few customers are coming forward to buy paddy.
In another word, farmers are unable to convert the fruit of their hard labour into cash, said the experts.
Of the total geographical area of Manipur, only 7.1 per cent is fit for paddy cultivation.
Whereas 52 per cent of the State's arable land fit for paddy cultivation is located in the valley, 67 per cent of the total population depend on agriculture for their livelihood.
Almost 52.19 per cent of the State's total work force are engaged in agricultural sector and thus agriculture contributes a major share in the State's Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP).
Meanwhile, vast tracts of paddy fields have been re-claimed for different purposes other than paddy cultivation such as construction of schools, brick fields, houses, etc.
This is despite the fact that the State Government enacted the Manipur Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland Act 2014 with the primary objective of conserving paddy fields and wetlands.
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