From Our Correspondent
AGARTALA: The rapidly growing urbanization will have a long term adverse impact on Tripura’s agriculture sector with area of cultivable land dwindling with every passing year.
The area of total cultivable which was 7,01,225 acres in 2008-09 has been reduced to 6,97,625 acres with an estimated loss of 6799 acres. While loss of cultivable land was 3600 acres in 2009-10 FY, the same stood at 2982 acres in the year 2010-11, according to reports available with Agriculture department.
Though the loss of cultivable area is less in comparison to other states like West Bengal and Bihar , this will certainly have an impact in the state- especially in the farm sector.
In a state like Tripura, any loss of cultivable land means reduction in crop production that will have an impact on the perspective plan for self sufficiency in the food grain production by 2013 FY, according to officials in Agriculture department.
“There is hardly any scope to increase the existing area of cultivable land keeping in mind the geographical and climatic condition. To overcome the problem, the department is now contemplating to go for cropping intensity by adopting various steps”, said a top Agriculture official who didn’t want to be named.
Growth in population and strive for urbanization are to be blamed for loss of cultivable land in Tripura where agriculture is still a vital sector, he said adding that more effective measures and better land management would be key to mitigate the problem in the years to come. It is to be mentioned that the department had set a target of 11,02,911 MT paddy production in 2010-11 FY and actual production stood at 10,53,708 MT during the period. The achievement percentage was 95 percent.
The produced paddy could feed the state for almost one year but due to problem to the milling facilities, this still remains a distant dream in the state.
Official figures say, the local paddy production could be well enough to meet the demand for 330 days but milling facilities are still poor affecting the prospect.
Acute shortage of fertilizer appears a major bottleneck in enhancing paddy production in the state. In the last year, the Urea supply was only 28,330 MT against the demand of 51,000 MT.
The supply of fertilizer like SSP, MOP and RP was quite less affecting the expecting paddy production. According to official figures, the demand of SSP was 49400 MT while the supply was only 21716 MT forcing farmers to buy fertilizer from open market at much higher price. Like wise, only 6804 MT of MOP was supplied against total demand of 19300 MT.
Officials said, the situation is unlikely to improve as there is acute shortage of fertilizer not only in Tripura but also in the entire Northeast.
Even engagement of private players in supplying fertilizer proved fail to address the problem, they said.