Haryana gives big push to new technique for growing rice
CHANDIGARH: Farmers of eight districts of Haryana under the watch of experts will grow paddy on 20,000 acres during the current paddy cultivation season, in what is the first-ofits-kind incentive-driven push to promote direct-seeded rice (DSR) technique.
Farmers opting for this costeffective and less water-consuming method of growing rice will receive Rs 5,000 per acre. Each farmer opting for this scheme can grow the crop using DSR technique on maximum 2.5 acre. This piece of land will be called ‘demonstration plot’ to popularise the technique among the peasants.
Growing rice by sowing the seed is already prevalent in few rice-producing pockets of Haryana.
The government is promoting this alternative way of cultivating rice instead of transplanting paddy by developing demonstration plots.
The traditional paddy transplantation practice is labour and water intensive, while DSR doesn’t require labour and water of the size and scale of the traditional method and can reduce water consumption and production cost by 15-20%.
“It’s a new initiative. Our target is to give incentive and support to 20,000 farmers and exposure and education to one lakh farmers,” said Dr Sumita Misra, additional chief secretary (ACS, agriculture), who has held meetings with district agriculture officials, directing them to achieve the DSR targets and educate farmers about the technique. This money-linked scheme will be implemented in Ambala, Yamunanagar, Karnal, Kurukshetra, Kaithal, Panipat, Sonepat and Jind districts.
Dr Misra said DSR-cultivated paddy demonstration plots will spread across 4,000 acre in Kaithal, 3,000 acre each in Karnal and Kurukshetra, and 2,000 acre each in Sonepat, Panipat, Jind, Ambala and Yamunanagar. An official of the agriculture department said 6,500 farmers have already given consent for the scheme.
Sources say the state government has also received in principle approval from the Centre for this policy under the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, an umbrella scheme for development of agriculture and allows states to choose their own agriculture and allied sector development activities.
Official say basmati rice can be grown as DSR under nonpuddle conditions and it can be done in almost all type of soils suitable for rice growing. The sowing is done in second and third week of June.
Without hand holding of government, Sukhwinder Singh, of Rasulpur village in Kaithal, has planted seven acre using DSR method as water table of his area is going down. “If the yield remains good this year, next year I will plant my 50-acre using DSR method,” he said.