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| Vegetable production changes fortunes in remote Budgam village | | |
Early Times Report
Budgam, Jan 28 : Bugaam Batpora, a small hamlet in the central Kashmir's Budgam district has over the years emerged as a largest vegetable producing village in Kashmir valley by producing high quality vegetables worth crores annually.
The village is known as "Chotaa Punjab " in Budgam which supplies vegetables not only to other districts of J&K state but it has also been exporting a good quantity of green vegetables to many north Indian states including Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. According to the villagers, people in the village shifted to vegetable farming around two decades back. "With their sustained efforts the production over the years has increased considerably, as a result of which the per capita income of the people associated with vegetable farming has shown sharp improvement," the locals said.
Around 800 hectares of land in the village are under cultivation of various kinds of vegetables including cauliflower, reddish, turnip, onion, potato, carrot, knolkhol, tomato etc.
"Bugaam Batpora and its adjoining villages have fertile land. But for some time the deficient irrigation facilities could not allow the people to go for vegetable cultivation," said a local vegetable producer of the area Abdul Kabeer while talking to Early Times . The vegetables of Bugaam village are very tasty and the people in civil lines of Srinagar prefer vegetables of Bugaam Batpora than those being produced in Dal Lake area which has more water content. The Bugaam land is dry and that is the reason the vegetables of this area are much tastier he further said Abdul Kabeer however added that after the Marvel Lift Irrigation project was commissioned in late 80s "people shifted to vegetable cultivation in a big way." "Now the people can cultivate any kind of vegetable in the village. Today an average family earns minimum one lakh per annum from the vegetable farming and the whole village is into this farming." He further added Mushtaq Ahmad Lone, a young vegetable grower said: "At an average forty to fifty trucks are loaded daily with different kinds of vegetables in our village especially during the summer months which is considered the peak season and this process continues for nearly five months from March every year." He said the vegetable cultivation in the village and adjoining areas has helped in employment generation particularly during summer months. "We feel short of labourers during the summers. So we engage Bihari labourers." According to locals the village does Rs 15 crore to Rs 20 crore business annually by supplying vegetables to various parts of J&K and also to other states in India, but the Agriculture department is not providing any assistance to the local farmers, which is a matter of grave concern for them. "We have hardly seen any agriculture officer in the village. They only come when the Agriculture department has some vegetable exhibition and the officials take some vegetable samples from our gardens," said a young entrepreneur Muzaffar Ahmad.
The local vegetable producers have demanded that they should be covered under crop insurance schemes and urged the Agriculture department to organize some awareness programmes in the village so that they also get benefitted by the various Government schemes meant for farmers. |
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