Punjab Agriculture Minister Demands Financial Package from Government for Farmers

Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal, Agriculture minister of Punjab wrote a letter to the Union's agriculture minister, Narendra Singh Tomar, on Thursday to impress upon the Centre to take the growers of the state out of the debt trap, wheat-paddy cycle, and promote crop diversification in addition to fruit and vegetable farming.

He demanded a financial package for border-area farmers, as well as money for water conservation and deploying cutting-edge equipment to defend crops from insect infestations. In addition, it has been urged to permit the export of agricultural and horticultural goods to the Middle East to raise the income of the nation's farmers.

Dhaliwal met with the Union agriculture minister at the national conference of state agricultural and horticulture ministers in Bengaluru, where he also demanded financial relief for the farmers of the state.

The minister has written that an average farmer feels he is in a debt trap. Being a border state, Pakistan is always looking for methods to undermine Punjab by promoting militancy and drug use among the province's substantial farming population. Therefore, the minister said in his letter, that it is proposed that the state be allocated a debt waiver fund as a one-time measure.

The letter also demanded compensation for the unfavorable circumstances placed on the 14,000 farmers who have the land in the 150-foot-wide, 425-kilometer-long strip across the barrier from the international border.

They are only permitted to work from 10 am to 4 pm and can only raise crops three feet. Dhaliwal recommended compensating them with Rs 15,000 per acre every year. In the last four decades of shortage, Punjab has given food grains, wheat, and rice to the nation. The soil produced over thousands of years has been deprived of its rich nutrients and the underground aquifers have got depleted to alarming levels.

In 15 to 20 years, the State won't have any water available for use. As part of its moral obligation, the Government of India (GoI) should establish a sufficient corpus to support the state's farmers in switching to high-value, water-efficient crops during the next ten years, such as cotton, pulses, fruits, vegetables, sugarcane, and oilseeds.

The corpus should have 2 components - one to hand hold the farmer to come out of the Paddy-Wheat cycle and the second to upgrade the level of research in Punjab Agriculture University, Ludhiana. Since there are only around 15 days between paddy harvest and wheat sowing, burning paddy stubble is more of a necessity than a farmer's habit. For a farmer to mechanically integrate the stubble with agricultural machinery, he has to be paid Rs. 2500 per acre. For 75 lac acre under Paddy, GoI is requested to give Rs.1125 crore annually for the purpose to the state.