Early Times Report
SRINAGAR, Aug 17: Despite the agriculture being backbone of state's economy, successive government have failed to give required flip to this all important sector.
This could be gauged from the draft of Agriculture Policy, which is yet to be implemented.
As per the government figures, Kashmir alone was losing an average 1,375 hectares of agricultural land annually. The data revealed by government had mentioned that the state had 8.47 lakh hectare agriculture land in 2005-06, which shrunk to 7.94 lakh hectare, increasing JK's dependency on other states for food-grains.
As per the draft of Agriculture Policy, the stagnant productivity (02 tonnes/hectare) of major food crops grown in the state not only discourages investment, but also makes the farming business a sub optimal proposition.
"Over 93% of holdings in the state belong to either marginal or small farmer category. The returns from small surpluses to this category do not suffice to cover even the input expenditure. Besides, the undulating topography prevents mechanization of agriculture and, in turn, investment on implements and machinery," it reads.
"Investments are required to harness the potential technological gains for improving the irrigation infrastructure to tap the potential of HYVs for high production and productivity. Despite significant progress made in terms of spread, network and outreach of credit delivery, the quantum of flow of financial resources to the agriculture and allied sectors continues to be inadequate, it says."
Successive governments have failed to implement the effective agriculture policy in the state that will lay down long term road map for improvisation of agriculture sector.
"The Agriculture Policy has been confined to papers only without being implemented on the ground. Although majority of population is directly or indirectly dependent on the sector but government has been least interested in implementing the Agriculture Policy," the official said.
The policy was framed to actualize the vast untapped growth potential of the agriculture, promote value addition, accelerate the growth of agri-business, and create employment in rural areas.
At the same time, the official said that the share of agriculture in GDP has fallen by approximately one third. "It is a point of concern that the combined contribution from primary and secondary sectors is becoming less than the lone contribution from service sector, which is a very unhealthy condition for sustaining growth in the long run," he said.
"The effects can be easily seen in the disparity ratio between average incomes of agriculturists and non-agriculturists, which has been increasing since long. This means that a major population (60 per cent people) of J&K is becoming poorer," he said. |
