LOUSAL calls on farmers
Source: The Sangai Express
Imphal, September 19 2023:
The Loumee Shinmee Apun Lup (LOUSAL) has called for a renewed movement of farmers to make Manipur a self-sufficient State on food production ahead of the Loumee Numit which falls on September 21 .
LOUSAL, in a statement, said that around 9718 hectares of arable land are in the conflict zone of the ongoing crisis.
Stating that the aggression by Kuki narco-terrorists coupled with deficit rainfall have affected the agriculture greatly, the farmer organisation maintained that about 31,742 paddy land in Manipur may not be able to produce any rice due to unavailability of irrigation facility and the crisis besieging Manipur since May 3 .
LOUSAL, said that Manipur was once self-sufficient in terms of food production with agriculture being the major source of the State's economy.
Saying that about 53 per cent of the State population are farmers while the size of arable land was around 1.95 lakh hectare in the past (88820 in hill districts and 106180 in the valley), it continued that the size of paddy land, however, has shrunk considerably in the valley due to the setting up of many public and private structures on the arable land by violating the Manipur Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland Act 2014.The farmer's organisation claimed that the size of arable land in the valley districts of Manipur have shrunk to about 70,000 hectares today.
Manipur imports almost half of the State requirement of rice from outside due to several factors one of which is the shrinkage of arable land, LOUSAL added.
As per the farmer organisation, Manipur needs to produce about 60,000 MT of rice annually to stop investing in buying rice from other States.
LOUSAL continued that widespread deforestation and poppy plantations have adverse impact on farmers as it causes artificial flood and drought.
There are many Government schemes and programmes for farmers on paper only.
These schemes for building farm pools, tube wells, mega dams, barrages, micro dams etc have not been implemented successfully on the ground, it said.