Neglected agriculture - where we are heading…?

By Baptist Sequeira, Belle

Bellevision Media Network

 

Moodubelle, 22 December 2010: Today onion price is hovering around Rs 70.000. " Pyaz rula Raha Hai" is the common refrain that we  see today in news channels and  read in news papers. If we can make an assessment of the last five to ten years, we find that the agricultural production in India as well as in the world has been declining. There are many reasons  for this phenomenon….

 

First of all,  after the Tsunami the seasons have been shifted. More rain and more cold (snow) has been damaging  the agriculture in one way, but industrialization and urban migration of rural people has also contributed towards the decline of agriculture. Third reason  is that most of the people are no longer dependant  on agriculture in modern times as it is  less profitable and since having more options for earning abroad. Thus, many of the  of the farms are barren  today.

 

 

Consider  our own village Belle. Once upon a time Belle had been  mainly dependant on agriculture. But this time when I visited few of the places of our locality, I could  see, about 70% farms have  not been cultivated. This has been the same case in many other regions that I had visited such as Kanaradi, Marne, Kattingere, Alevoor, Manbail, Pamboor, Padubidri, Inna, Palimar, Mulki, Attinje, mnay places which we see during the travel fields are bare.

 

Famers have been increasingly becoming the victims of natural vagaries such as excessive rain or drought. This year particularly, rain started late, but it rained during harvesting  of the crop also thus damaging the paddy. Hence,  this year it would be difficult to get rice at our place and also hay for cows. Luckily these days people do not have to depend on hay for covering their house-roofs.

 

The off season rain during the whole month of December has harmed other crops as well.  For example people having areca-nut and coconut cultivation could not dry these produces before taking them to market causing considerable monetary loss. The same case with those  with black pepper.

 

The Jasmine flower business has been also adversely affected due to  incessant rains skyrocketing the price of one atti of jasmine (four chendus) to more than Rs 400.00.  As many of us know that during the Christmas season jasmine crop yield has been more. But these years it is not.

 

Now after the "Suggi" farming of rice, people use to grow grams crop. But the off season rain will spoil the crop as it will prevent the plants from producing flowers on time, and even if it produce flowers, it will not able to produce beans because of pollination will be affected by the rain again.

 

This lack of agricultural production may seem to be a general problem in India. But days are not far that Gulf people will have to suffer a little more because of this problem in coming days. As we know, a month back tomato price here in Gulf  was very high. Today onion price is quite high because even the vegetable production in Western Gulf countries has been affected by some diseases.

 

This year rice price also may go up since in Pakistan a huge crop land was covered by water because of this year’s rain. Same problem in India because some places there has been drought and some other  place more rain.

 

The reason why I presented my views  in this small article is that I am apprehensive that a  day may come I future where we may have to book  rice in advance so that after a year we may receive the  quantity of rice that we had booked in advance as we book vehicles today....

 

Is there a solution for this problem?... As long as we really face the problem of food scarcity we will not feel the problem. It is high time that the government in general and the people in particular should visualize the problem and reclaim the agricultural land before it turns completely barren so that our next generation should not see the days which I have just mentioned above.