Friday, September 1, 2017

Alternate Road Map for Bihar Agriculture
R.C. Srivastava
FNAAS, FISAE, FIASWV, FIE, FCHAI, FJISL
Vice-Chancellor
Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa (Bihar)

            At present Bihar has 56 lakh ha under cultivation out of geographical area of about 93 lakh ha, which means that we have about 60% of our land mass under cultivation leaving very little for forest, infrastructure development and industry.  A major impediment to our infrastructure development is lack of land availability and stiff resistance to land acquisition because it will be depriving them of their source of livelihood.  This becomes even more important because 68% of Bihar population derives their livelihood from agriculture.
            Out of 56 lakh ha about 45 lakh ha is under cultivation of food crops (cereals and pulses).  Presently, this 45 lakhs ha is producing about approx. 80 lakh tonnes rice, 50 lakh tonnes of wheat, 30 lakh tonnes of maize and 5 lakh tonnes of pulses making a total of 165 lakh tonnes.  Our agriculture road map envisages gradual increasing productivity of these crops and at the same time enhancing area under orchards, vegetables along with focus on animal husbandry without talking from where the land will come for growing fodder crop to ever increasing cattle population.
            Thus it is essential to think on a target productivity approach to reduce the area under food crops so that a significant area can be put up under horticultural crops and fodder crop and remaining retired/shifted to industry and infrastructure development.
            My envisaged plan is to divide state in blocks where following productivity targets have to be achieved in next three years.
Area
lakh ha
Annual productivity
t/ha
Total production
Lakh tonnes
5
10
50
10
6
60
10
4
40
5
3
15
10
2
20
Total :           40
-
185

        The five lakh ha which will retire from food crops can be put up to other uses like this: 2 lakh ha for horticultural crops, 2 lakh ha for fodder and one lakh ha for infrastructure/industry.
            In next three year periods, the productivity targets will be revised like this:
Area
lakh ha
Annual productivity
t/ha
Total productivity
Lakh ha
5
10
50
10
6
60
15
4
60
7.5
3
22.5
                                                                             Total :
192.5

            The additional 2.5 lakh ha can be divided in similar fashion as written earlier.
            To achieve this, we have to first increase the area by providing affordable irrigation to whole area.  Dr. RPCAU has developed technologies for this which needs to be evaluated on large scale.
            Further, the requirement of seed, fertilizers, plant protection and capacity building of each such sector will have to be assessed and infrastructure developed.  Similarly for each such sector, warehouse, cold chain and value addition as well as post harvest measure requirement will have to be assessed and suitable action plan have to be prepared and executed on time bound basis.


6 comments:

  1. Sir
    We can achieve your Plan (increase in crop production in next tree years from 185 lakh ton to 192.5lakh ton ) by using Modern techniqes, bio-fertilizer & planned scheme

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  2. Respected Sir, I saw the vision you have in the prospective of Bihar. We will try to achieve this target in the coming days. Very nice information sir . Regards,

    ReplyDelete
  3. Respected Sir, I saw the vision you have in the prospective of Bihar. We will try to achieve this target in the coming days. Very nice information sir . Regards,

    ReplyDelete
  4. Our main problems regarding to water management about 30 % area suffer from flood and 40% area suffer from drought, is there any road map to mitigate this problem. Because I Bihar maximum migration of agricultural labour due to this problem only, and other is the sociology economic aspects.

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  5. Sir written ke bad. Kya hoga sss ka

    ReplyDelete