Punjab Agriculture Minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal on Friday personally handed over a letter to the Union Agriculture Minister Narinder Singh Tomar to impress upon the Centre to take the state’s farmers out of the debt trap, wheat-paddy cycle, and promote crop diversification besides fruit and vegetable farming.
Dhaliwal demanded a financial package for curbing the trend of stubble burning, reducing the hardships of border area farmers, and saving water in agriculture and using modern tools to protect against pest attacks.
Apart from this, it has also been demanded to open the export of agricultural and horticultural products to the Middle East so as to expand the income of farmers of the state.
Dhaliwal, who was in Bengaluru to attend the national conference of Agriculture and Horticulture Ministers of the states where he met the Union Agriculture Minister personally, demanded financial relief for the state’s farmers.
In his letter, Dhaliwal said that as Punjab is a border state, “Pakistan is always on a look out for vulnerabilities of the state’s large farming population, further weaken it by promoting drugs and militancy. It is, therefore, requested that as a one-time measure, a debt waiver fund should be given to the State”.
The letter read that farmers of 14,000 acres in the 150-feet wide 425 km long belt across the fence along border should be compensated for the adverse conditions imposed on them. “They can work only from 10 am to 4 pm and can’t grow crops higher than three feet. Therefore, they should be compensated with Rs 15,000 per acre per year,” it added.
Citing Punjab’s contribution in providing food grains, wheat, and rice to the nation in past four decades of scarcity, the Minister said that the Centre should, as a moral duty, set up an adequate corpus to help the farmer in the state to diversify, to water conserving and high value crops over the next decade, like - cotton, pulses, fruits, vegetables, sugarcane, oilseeds.
The corpus should have two components – one to hand hold the farmer to come out of the paddy-wheat cycle, and second to upgrade the level of research in Punjab Agriculture University, Ludhiana.
The Minister also sought Rs 2,500 per acre compensation to the farmers to enable them to incorporate stubble mechanically with farm equipment. For 75 lakh acre under paddy, the Centre is requested to give Rs 1,125 crore annually for the purpose to the state.
“Infusion of Artificial Intelligence is the need of the hour to guide farmers in controlling watering, addition of fertilizer, use of drones, in picking fruit and to keep an eye on pests. This requires investment in mapping the land parcels accurately, installing sensors in soil, and in drones and other software and hardware,” he said.
He added, “Similarly, precision agriculture, in green houses, vertical agriculture and hydroponics are now widely practiced in Israel and other developed nations and can prove saviours for the small farmer of the state. A fund of at least Rs 300 crore per year over the next decade will help bring about the change.”
“To promote growing of fruit and vegetables, farmers need a cold chain of warehouses and trucks or vehicles. Rs 1000 crore corpus to begin with, will go a long way to help state diversify,” he added.
The Minister also called for opening trade of Agricultural and Horticulture products with Pakistan, Iraq, and Middle East which will greatly help the state’s economy.