While addressing the 9th Convocation ceremony of SKUAST Jammu, both Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha said that the positive impact of the Holistic Agriculture Development Programme (HADP) and Competitiveness Improvement of Agriculture and Allied Sectors Project in J&K (JKCIP) on farmers’ income is now visible and called upon the new generation of scientists and experts to focus on smart farming, adding, the revolution in seed production, pest management, food processing, farm mechanization has ensured opportunities for the young professional to contribute in product development and quality control. Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah also addressed the Convocation and while highlighting the importance of agriculture and allied sectors, said this is an area which has a rich potential and needs a focused attention from the government and the academia to build self-reliant Jammu and Kashmir with farmer-centric research. He, however, admitted that this sector is also fraught with risks and dangers as land is becoming more and more scarce and climate change is also a reality.
Fact of the matter is that focusing on agriculture and allied sectors can significantly transform J&K’s economy thus reducing the dependency on imports for many necessities. Jammu and Kashmir has been lavishly bestowed with a wealth of resources by nature, which if exploited judiciously and scientifically could unburden people from seemingly unavoidable dependence on neighbouring states for essential commodities like food-grains. The soil of the UT is very fertile and the yield per hectare could be astounding if only the farmers of the UT develop scientific outlook and then take to latest farming techniques. But unfortunately this is not the whole picture of the state of agriculture in the UT. Fact of the matter remains that Jammu and Kashmir desperately lags behind in agriculture and allied sectors so much so that the UT is not able to fulfill its own needs of food. Doubtlessly the economic condition of the UT is very precarious and agriculture is the sector that could bail it out. But this is possible only if people, and the educated young lot in particular, also start thinking of agriculture and related sectors as a sphere of activity to opt for a career in.
Related posts
On its part, government also shares a lot of blame, for it has not accorded agriculture kind of priority it deserved and nothing much has been done to popularize it and develop it on scientific lines. But having said this, it also remains an uncomfortable reality that people of the Union Territory, and ironically mostly the rural-folk have been running only after the government jobs. One of the major problems confronting us is the transformation of our agrarian agricultural lands into concrete jungles. This was, and is bound to happen because when farmer’s children opt for some other jobs other than farming, the agricultural land of the family gets automatically relegated into a material piece of property. This land is then sold off, even if for a fortune, but it very rarely gets recycled into a state wherein it would again contribute to production of food.
