Research is going on to increase rice yields per unit of land. Simply increase the yield will not improve the income of farmers unless the total production is properly utilized? Distress sale of paddy is very common. Just like abiotic stress, distress sale is also a stress now to rice farmers. Rice is grown under different situations such upland, irrigated, rainfed lowland i.e. shallow (water-stagnation up to 30 cm), medium depth (31-50 cm), deep water (>50 to 100 cm) etc. We need technology and proper planning to improve the income of the farmers. What they are? Any technology, which tell about only to increase yield will not increase farmers income.
One way is to reduce cost of cultivation and make available good quality seed of improved high yielding varieties to the farmers b
High quality seeds sustain the production. No doubt farmers do not get good quality seeds all the time but when they get it their rice production do not decrease. It is just like production of another year when they get good seeds. We started to work on farmers field and gave training to farmers to produce good quality seeds. In a village only hardly 10 farmers earned more money who produced seeds, though the entire village and the farmers of surrounding areas got the benefit of good seeds. The farmers who sold the seeds they earned more money but those got good seeds their income did not increase but stabled. Seed production by the farmers particularly of rice is no doubt a good aspect to increase income, but only a fractions would increase their income through this process.
At present, most of the rice growing areas are saturated with high yielding modern rice varieties/hybrids in India. Some of the key factors for profitable rice production would be planning the suitable rice variety as per the geographic location to avoid unwanted pest and diseases ; minimizing the dependence on human labor ; relying less on chemical fertilizers (which consume major cost of cultivation) and instead change the practice towards application of locally available resources such as green manuring / FYM and harvesting at right time for attaining high head rice recovery which is the major factor for better pricing of the produce.
Good, if farmers take appropriate measures they can save the produce and can get good price. In general the variety release for one state is not grown in other states. When a variety is grown in a particular state, several experiments are done for suitability of the variety for that zones. Mechanization can reduce the cost of cultivation, yes. Where mechanization is 80-100%? New thinking is needed for that zones. Reducing use of pesticide including botanicals can reduce the cost of cultivation. Still farmers use pesticide. Use of green manure, I think thousands of experiments are done from 1980s on the use of green manure, adoption is very poor. Unless the inherent problems are identified and removed on this technology, scope to use it minimal. Farm mechanization directly decrease the use of animal energy in agriculture, result less availability of FYM. Farmers are unable to sell their produce in the market at profitable price that is why they demand MSP and desires their produce should purchase the Government Agency. The matter is very complicated. Presently for the cultivation of rice some technologies are applied. Each technology bears some cost. How we can reduce the costs of each technology so that farmers can improve their income?
This Kharief season expectation is bumper production. Results: fall of price. Expected measures to reduce the burden of farmers: purchase as much as paddy at MSP or subsidize the gap price (MSP - market price). Probably this is not solution. At least by this process scope to increase farmers income is not possible. It can give only sustainability to cultivate.
Make awareness among the farmers regarding high yielding varieties of rice ...
R. K. Sarkar
1. Ensure Crop rotating/suitable cropping pattern
2. Make available good seed of suitable variety for the region
3. Train farmers for technologies
4. Grow farmers awareness
5. Ensure marketing
6. Reduce middle man from farmers to consumers
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