The future of agriculture has become bleaker in the absence of a sound state agriculture policy coupled with the new challenges brought forth by the impacts of climate change.
Farmers are already talking about a bad harvest this year and the reasons given are lack of adequate rainfall in time, unprecedented rise in temperature and of course the chaos in distribution of fertilisers.
Just as the recently sowed seeds are beginning to sprout or transplanted seedlings starting to grow, the lack of rains has led to widespread damage by the blistering heat.
In light of recent changes in rainfall patterns and heat waves, the policy planners in the state and experts need to put their heads together to evolve a sound agricultural policy as we cannot leave our farmers and agricultural activities to the mercy of erratic weather and unpredictable seasonal rains.
The state needs to develop a comprehensive water policy and this needs to be incorporated while framing an agriculture policy specific to Manipur.
First, one needs to highlight the ever-widening gap between demand and water sources while taking into account the erratic rainfall patterns.
Farmers cite construction of dams, deforestation at catchment areas, and quarrying among others as the main cause for the drying up of the small rivers and tributaries.
Manipur has been facing a monsoon rain deficit of about 60 percent and receiving an annual rainfall of 1600 mm only.
It is not only the case of rainfall deficit when farmers want it, in recent times rainfall patterns have become so erratic that farmers can no longer depend on it. This is indeed a tragedy as Manipur’s agriculture depends on timely rains.
This year, pre-monsoon rainfall had been quite excessive. The problem of water scarcity, however, persists due to lack of groundwater recharge and also depletion of groundwater resources, lack of facilities for harvesting rainwater and destruction of catchment areas.
There are also reports showing that 42 per cent of the natural springs in the hill areas of the state have vanished.
In the context of Manipur, we need a state-specific comprehensive policy for water involving multiple departments so as to evolve an integrated strategy for rejuvenation of springs in the hills, afforestation of catchment areas of the major rivers, widespread rain-water harvesting schemes while regulating pumping of groundwater.
One has to take into account the rapidly decreasing groundwater level before even thinking of harnessing it for agricultural purposes.
Manipur’s soil had long been known for its fertility and distinctive flavour in agricultural produce be it in rice or vegetables.
Now, that has become a thing of the past and the soil has become quite addictive to chemical fertilisers and it will take a long process and time to revert to organic farming and bio-fertilisers. For the present, the state government needs a policy where fertilisers reach the farmers in time and adequately without any hassles.
The other day, Agriculture Minister Th Biswajit Singh said that the government will adopt a new mechanism with Aadhaar Seeding for each farmer in the next Kharif season so that the fertilisers can be made available abundantly at the time of need and issues can be solved. Yet, he did not spell out how such a system is going to solve the problem.
While the total allocation of urea for kharif 2022 is 22,000 MT, the total quantity of urea transported to the state so far is 11,634.84 MT only.
In the last few years, the state agriculture department had been experimenting with new mechanisms of fertiliser distribution without much success and the bulk of fertilizers always managed to find its way to the makeshift godowns of local MLAs. And thus, politics take control. Even recently, there were reports of some MLAs denying fertilizers to the supporters of their rivals.
