Is planned agriculture need of the hour? Will this really help farmers?

24th May 2020

03:00 pm

Recently Telangana Cheif Minister KCR has proposed a policy for the farmers of Telangana. It states that farmers should do agriculture based on the crops recommended by govt. of telangana. This is a very good step taken by CM KCR for getting MSP for a crop and ofcourse yes planned farming is ‘need of the hour’. But this policy should be implemented by not only planning of the crop to be grown by a farmer but also should plan from the roots of the supply chain. For example, to recommend a farmer to grow rice crop the government should analyse the soil texture, water availability, crop season, type of rice to be sown, demand for the crop, processing facilities, minimum selling price of the crop, marketing facilities, quality of rice seed and many more. This total analysis should be done to each and every crop throughout the year.

Also government needs to increase the research to increase the yield of crops in our climatic condition. Also the govt. has to increase the number of cold storages based on the demand. Govt. also need to analyse the crops to export to other states and other countries and also should increase soil testing centers. Also quality of seeds and pesticides should be of good quality and govt. should ban and punish who produce bad quality of seeds. And all this information should be given to farmers and each farmer should be recommended to grow a crop based on all the above conditions. This overall process should be a continuous process and when all this process happen in a planned manner, this will help farmers to become rich.

Also, Government of Telangana announced that ‘Raithu bandhu'(-an exclusive scheme for all the farmers which gives Rs 5000 per acre per crop season) will be cut for the farmers who don’t grow government recommended crop. I think this statement made this forced farming rather than planned regulated farming. But rather government should have said that incentives will be given for those who grow crops recommended by government.

So Govt. of Telangana should implement this with a well planned strategy from the roots of the supply chain. Only then, farmers will get good profits from the crops they have harvested. Lets hope farmers in Telangana will have a good future due to this planned farming and also lets hope Telangana to become first state with no farmer suicides in near future.