Increasing farmer’s income
Agricultural activity in all forms in Jammu and Kashmir has been witnessing various challenges. One among them being the non-adherence and non-compliance of the farming community over the use of modern farming techniques.
Jammu and Kashmir has not been able to maintain the required growth during the times of high competition and increased production from other regions especially in the agricultural sector.
The region has been facing many challenges to maintain the level of competitiveness as farm mechanization processes have been ignored to a large extent till today. Since mechanisation of farming is one of the important factors to transform the agriculture sector the region has been missing on the returns of sweeping changes which have otherwise helped farmers to produce more and increase their incomes.
As a part of agricultural mechanisation support to the farmers for broader economic transformation, the government has initiated the process of ensuring farm mechanizations for which machinery and other tools will .provided to the farmers.
Mechanisation of farming is one of the important factors to transform the agriculture sector. It will further lead to sweeping changes and help farmers produce more. But for ensuring this the government has to ensure efficient use of seed technologies, high-density plantation, nutrient management, and widespread adoption of integrated dairy farming schemes to make Jammu and Kashmir agricultural powerhouse.
Though some measures have been initiated by the agriculture department as they are providing facilities like cold storage, market linkages and food processing units, besides developing a strong framework for farmer-industry to connect and generate employment opportunities for rural youth to bridge the urban-rural divide, but lot more needs to be done to help generate huge revenues and job opportunities for the youth.
One of the key drawbacks that have been hampering the growth in the agriculture sector here is that the farmers failed to adopt new ways like cash crops, intercropping along with traditional agriculture for the steady increase in farm income.
The avoidance of high land use has meant that we are missing on a high yield besides increased mandays. The increased land use will ensure that the yield per hectare will increase tremendously adding to the farmer’s income and other avenues.
The high land use and rotational cropping will ensure that our exports will increase tremendously which will directly put a focus on generating more revenues.
Interestingly, it is for the first time in history that, 2,000 trucks of vegetables have been exported from Jammu and Kashmir to other parts of the country. Jammu and Kashmir has achieved top position in the entire country with a yield of 70 quintals per hectare of paddy.
This being the reason that a proposal to convert 60,000 hectares of Basmati agricultural land into high productivity land is presently being pursued. Besides, the multiple cropping has ensured that Jammu and Kashmir has produced a record 5,400 metric tonnes of mushroom and 22,182 quintals of honey.
The results that are showing encourage us to promote agricultural activities and involve the young populace in the sector so that they too can become part of the change by using their scientific temper and resorting to massive use of technology in this crucial activity.
KV Network
