‘IHK food shortage growing severe’

Srinagar, Jan 10 : With agriculture in held Jammu and Kashmir witnessing “gradual slump”, the occupied State is likely to face food insecurity in future if it does not take measures, an official report has warned.

 The state food grains production was not keeping pace with the requirement and the yield of principal crops—rice, wheat and maize—was not significantly improving, the report has revealed.

 This situation has been attributed to low productivity, low Seed Replacement Ratio (SRR), yield stagnation, poor irrigation facility as around 60 percent of the net area sown is rain-fed and small size of holding.

 JK’s annual food grain production is hovering around 18 lakh metric tons while the demand has crossed 24 lakh metric tons.
 The gap in production which was around two metric ton in 1980 has grown up to nine lakh metric tons and is met through imports.
 Warning food grain shortage in future the Economic Survey report revealed that state’s food shortage would grow as projected population would rise beyond 1.5 crore by 2020 with decadal growth rate of 23.71 percent.

 “The growth in the agriculture production is not satisfactory and government needs to make huge investments in the sector to meet the demands of the food grains,” the report said.

 An official said food grains imports in J&K were 5.03 lakh tonnes during 2002-03 which reached to 7.64 lakh tonnes during 2008-09 and 8.67 lakh tonnes during 2009-10. The imports jumped to over 9 lakh metric tonnes during 2010-11.

 To sustain continuous growth in the productivity, seed management plays a vital role, he explained.

 “Looking at the present situation the figures are highly unsatisfactorily. The national average of the seed replacement rate  has been above 25 percent while as JK is yet to cross 15 percent of the SRR in case of high yielding varieties of major crops,” he said.
 This is directly impacting the economy. The average percentage contribution of agriculture and allied sectors towards Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) was around 20 percent in 2011-12, below than the corresponding share of 28.06 percent in 2004-05.
 The problem has aggravated by shrinking of the farming size due to continuous breakdown of the joint family system, growing urbanization, population explosion and conversion of agriculture land.

 According to the 8th census report (Revenue), 14.43 lakh operational holders were operating on 9.62 lakhs hectares of land in 2000-01.

 But the numbers have fallen to 13.78 lakhs operational holders operating on 9.23 lakhs hectares, a decrease of 1.50 percent in operational holders and 0.041 percent in operated area.
 Besides, the average holding size of 0.67 hectares has gone down from 0.76 hectares in 1995-96 (agriculture census).

 The net area sown is 728.56 thousands hectares. But as per the figures for 2010-11, around two lakh hectares of land, 12.09 percent, has been put to non-agriculture use in JK. Nearly 70 percent of the state population is directly or indirectly linked with agriculture for livelihood.

 As per official figures there has been no significant improvement in the net area irrigated over the past four decades.

 The area has grown from around 297 thousand hectares in 1974-75 to 313.99 thousand hectares in 2010-11, witnessing just 19 thousand hectares increase in 36 years.

 The crop yield has not grown significantly too.

 The per hectare crop yield for 2010-11 regarding principal agriculture crops was around 19.42 quintals for rice, 17.12 quintals for maize, and 15.35 quintals for wheat.

The corresponding figures were 18.97 quintals, 15.11 quintals and 6.45 quintals for rice maize and wheat in 1964-65 and 17.02 quintals 15.92 quintals and 5.29 quintals in 2000-01.

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