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Designed , developed & Hosted By Kishoo, Barkur |
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FARMING
IN OUR NATIVE PLACE During the last two weeks or so, few of our enthusiastic readers,
shown concern, towards the Agriculture and the Farming community,
and trying to focus on this neglected field, in this site! With due
respects to all of you, me being a farmer’s son, will just try to
share few of my feelings. Many a times during our visit to native place, whenever my parents
come out with inherent problems encountered by them, such as labour
shortage, erratic monsoon, lack of pest control measures, high cost of
production and procurement, transportation problems etc, I normally used
to give some vague, in a way irresponsible solutions like -
‘if it is difficult, don’t cultivate’ Particularly, in our village, our holdings are very small, as a
result of sub-division, and precariously fragmented, make the situation
bad, to introduce modern mechanical farming, to reap economies of large
scale. Today, every right thinking man, need to focus this area, in these
days of globalisation - What future waiting for a farmer? Is farming Profitable? In India, 65% of the working population is engaged in agriculture,
directly or indirectly and in turn comprise 30% of the GNP. Green revolution in India made us
self-sufficient in food, especially during last 3-4 decades, and the
role of a farmer no one will ignore. But for tomorrow, this growing
population should be fed…! This is vast subject; in short, let me restrict in this passage,
only to few of our problems… Apart from others, I feel, we failed in learning, the optimum
utilisation of soil, usage and preservation of water, adopting modern
nature friendly agro-technology, lack farsightedness and administrative
skills, non co-operation within the farming community vis a-vis
Government agencies to mention a few. Excessive use of insecticides, specially chemical fertilisers,
because no one interested to have buffalos, even cows,
- during my childhood, there used to be a pair in every Catholic
farming household, in my village, in turn providing nature friendly
manure. Not long ago, farmer used to command respect in the Church and
society and there were progressive landlords as well as tenants in our
Barkur about 2/3 decades ago, now we can see barren land everywhere in
the villages. Where ever road access is there cultivating land converted
to be housing plots. Few suggestions for consideration: Those who really not keen or find difficult to engage them, better
lease or sell such fertile fields to nearby farmers preferably to the
same community or trustworthy people. Jointly work out and pressurise Govt. authorities to give Road links
in the fields. Co-operative farming is ideal, but
who will take initiative…better social workers should take lead here,
as political leaders bring only politics, and further complicate the
issues, in this field too. Where ever possible mixed or diversified cultivation can be
opted for. If possible, consolidation of small patches of land, or inter
exchange of fragmented land is to be a measure to increase the size of
the holding to make it fit to use tillers and tractors, reaping
machines, sowing equipments etc. Organise conferences, seminars, and training camps to farmers to
educate them, on water conservation, dry land cultivation, impart
knowledge on improvements in various breeds and brands. I am not sure whether, this message reach to the right people….
but earnestly hope it just should not be one more subject to console
self, on the contrary, this Web-site, request our well-wishers to come
out with their opinions. We have quality readers and social concerned contributors, like Mr
James Fernandez, Mr. Gopal Poojary, Rev. Fr. Henry D’Souza, Mr.
G.S.Lewis, Dr.Derrick D’Souza, Mr Herald D’Souza, Mr Ozwald D’Lima,
Mr. Herbert Menezes….. and many others…. with agricultural
background, with rich knowledge of the subjects, to find little time to
air their views. On behalf Barkur
Web-site, and ICYM Barkur Ex-member’s Committee
P.Archibald Furtado, Muscat, 31st October, 2002 For a series of a very high quality articles covering many subjects, by Mr. Archibald Furtado , go through the archives. Click on the respective subject |
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Barkur, located in Udupi Taluk, Karnataka, India. 576 210 |
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Copyright Kishoo, Barkur 2002. |
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