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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Is Madhya Pradesh losing its pulse? -LS Herdenia

Is Madhya Pradesh losing its pulse? -LS Herdenia

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published Published on Oct 31, 2015   modified Modified on Oct 31, 2015
-IPA Service

Soya bean damage leads to more woes

There was a time when Madhya Pradesh was known as "Soya Pradesh". But from this year Madhya Pradesh will cease to be so.

Similarly Madhya Pradesh was a leading state for production of all types of pulses. But at present the state is facing severe scarcity of Pulses. Soya crops have been ruined, this fact has been accepted by the Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan. Realising the gravity of the situation Chauhan has already sought massive aid from the Centre. While Chief Minister insists that the Soya crops have suffered massive damage, officials of the Agriculture department do not think so. According to the Agriculture department spokesman damage to Soya crop is not so serious and the crop has not been destroyed totally even at the places where the pest has struck or where the monsoon had played truant. Off the record the officials claim that soya bean crops have not been damaged in more than 25 lakh hectares of land. The reports of the Collectors also back their claim.

On the other hand, Chauhan is insisting that crops on 50 lakh hectares have been destroyed. Agriculture Director Mohanlal Meena said the extent of damage to Soyabean crop will be known only after a week. Meena said it was estimated that Soyabean production would be 77 lakh MT this year. The department has now revised the estimates. It is now hoping for a 40 lakh MT harvest. Meena said only speculations can be made as of now regarding the production as at many places harvesting is still on. He admitted that Soyabean crop has been damaged on a large scale.

There is wide variation in the estimates of the CM and the Agriculture department. The real situation would become clear only after October 27. Ministers, IAS, IPS and IFS officers will tour villages and interact with Soya farmers. The reports of these officers will also help assess the extent of damage. Considering the situation to be very alarming Chief Minster has taken several steps first to assess the damage and secondly to chalk out detailed strategy to give maximum relief to peasants who had lost their crops. Several steps have been taken in view of reports of suicides by farmers. Almost every day newspaper columns are full of reports of suicides. One of the major steps taken by the Chief Minister is to ask members of the Indian Administrative Service, Indian Police Service and Indian Forest Service to visit the villages which have suffered damage.

As far as Pulse crisis is concerned, Gadarwara area of Narsinghpur district, about 200 kilometres from Bhopal, once had a roaring pulses trade, especially in arhar, moong and urad. The quality of the pulses drew traders from southern states, Bihar and Bengal from the 90's onward. However, frequent hailstorms hit the harvest and the quality of the product. The trend then began to reflect as losses for the farmers. Many of them quit pulse cultivation and in effect the hub began to lose its age-old clientele and fame, experts say.

The trend is amply reflected in the figures which show shrinking pulses cultivation land over a period of time. In Narsinghpur district the area of cultivation of arhar (tur dal) declined continuously from 51.70 thousand hectare in 2011-12, 44.25 thousand hectare in 2012-13 to 35.50 thousand hectare in 2013-14. The production of arhar dropped from 5,85,000 tonnes in 2011-12 to 4,11,800 tonnes in 2013-14. The farmers from other districts including Sagar, Damoh, Raisen, Seoni, Chhindwara go to Narsinghpur krishi mandi to sell the yield since they get higher price there than other mandis.

The farmers sell their yield to the private traders instead of going to the government procurement centre where the minimum support price announced by the Union Government for arhar (tur dal) was Rs. 4,350 per quintal (2014-15). For the same period, the private traders in Narsinghpur paid Rs. 6000-8000 per quintal to farmers. Most of the pulse processing mills are located in Gadarwara area of the district where once there were 80 dal processing mills now there are only 14 mills operational. "Farmers slowly shifted to other crops from pulses due to which the millers did not get sufficient raw stocks and the profit margin narrowed. This led to closure of units in past 15-20 years". Mahesh Malpani, a mill owner in Gadarwara said.

It is for the first time senior officers have been involved to assess the crop damage. So far the assessment of damage was done by the officers of Revenue department, particularly by Patwaris. Though All India service officers will carry out the Chief Minister's directive but, in private talks they said that while this job can be done by local officials there is no sense in involving them and wasting their valuable time.


KashmirTimes.com, 30 October, 2015, http://www.kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=46386


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