Contrary to the tall claims of Manohar lal Khattar Government for promoting crop diversification in Haryana, the farmers have refrained from cultivating alternative crops and stuck to entrenched paddy-wheat cycle in the state.
The crop diversification programme has suffered from the ‘poor launch syndrome’ in Haryana. Sheer dearth of proper input support, inadequate and delayed procurement, agricultural loan and lower minimum support price (MSP) has remained the major factors discouraging the farmers from cultivation of alternative crops in the state. This has been revealed in a recent study undertaken by Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Centre (CRRID) to evaluate success of diversification of agricultural crops in Haryana.
The study report has pointed out that the constant fluctuation in prices, especially during harvesting of pulses, sunflower and mustard has discouraged the farmers from growing these crops and revert back to growing paddy, wheat and vegetables. The financial dilemma despite all the efforts and loan schemes operated by the State Government has also persisted in the rural agriculture scenario.
The crop diversification programme (CDP) was launched during 2013-14 in Haryana to replace paddy with maize and other alternative crops.
The four major components of the CDP included alternate crops demonstrations, farm mechanization and value addition, site specific activities, and contingency for awareness training, implementation and monitoring.
The State Government has also announced various schemes to encourage crop diversification. However, the efforts towards crop diversification have yielded little or no results so far in Haryana due to poor procurement and low MSP of non paddy-wheat crops.
“The performance of CDP in each respective component had a modest start in 2013-14 while in 2015-16, the percentage of achieving physical and financial targets remained lackluster owing largely to the introduction of online system of registration and benefit transfer to the farmers in 2016-17,” the report stated. According to the findings of the study, under CDP component of cluster demonstration of alternative crops, physical target achievement dropped to 8.99 percent in 2016-2017 from 68.41 percent in 2015-16. Similarly, the financial target achievement plunged to 7.22 percent in 2016-17 from 61.57 in 2015-16 in Haryana.
Stating that the crop diversification schemes suffered from the ‘poor launch syndrome’, the study observed that diversification programmes received a cold shoulder by the farming community, especially the small land holders who cannot afford experimentation in agriculture in Haryana.
“Many of the ground level agricultural officers in Haryana asserted that the targets set by State Government under CDP were ambitious with inadequate infrastructure of their implementation, such as, shortage of staff, no or limited office infrastructure for agriculture development officers, delayed reimbursement of subsidy etc,” the report revealed.
In Haryana, paddy, wheat, sugarcane, cotton, oilseeds, gram, barley and millet contribute to the state’s repute of being ranked as the second largest food basket of the country.
An analysis of the data gathered from the field by CRRIDD revealed that throughout the six districts chosen for the study, the farmer have faced the problems of low MSP and poor procurement of the alternative crops.
“The procurement on behalf of Government agencies has been rated poorly by the farmers. 98 percent of the farmers said that procurement was severely inadequate for the alternative crops whenever they grew in the past,” the report stated.
72 percent of the farmers who grew and sold maize, oilseeds, bajra and other alternative crops were found dissatisfied with the market price. 45 percent of farmers who grew alternative crops faced difficulty in selling the produce in local markets, it further stated.
On awareness quotient, the report said, “Out of the farmers covered from six districts in Haryana, less than 50 per cent farmers (49.4) are found aware about the ongoing diversification schemes.
Variation has been observed across selected districts in terms of awareness about the CDP as around 50 per cent farmers were aware about the programmes/schemes in Yamunanagar district, 40 percent in Kurukshetra, 53 percent in Fatehabad, and 43 percent Kaithal and Sirsa each and 66.7 per cent in Sonipat, it stated.
Notably, the environmentalists and agriculture experts have warned of grave consequences in the coming times, if the practice of cultivating paddy and wheat specialization persists in the state.
Several studies have confirmed that persistent and repeated mono-cropping leads to soil degradation and subsequent loss in its retention capacity.