Arjinder Kaur

Crop Residue in Punjab Agriculture-Status and Constraints

With 70 per cent of net sown area under paddy in kharif season and 84.6 percent of it under wheat crop in rabi season, the crop residue is generated in huge quantities. Out of this 95 per cent of paddy straw and 25 per cent of wheat straw is burnt each year. The hazardous practice has affected health, air, road safety, soil etc. leading to massive physical as well as monetary losses. The present study has been based on primary data collected from three agri-economic zones of the state to highlight the constraints pertaining to the issue. For the state as a whole, 67.47 per cent of the total sampled farmers reported not burning the residue of the crops. Lack of buyers, shortage of time for next crop, lack of assistance by the state government and lobour shortage emerged as the major reasons for the ongoing practice. Measures like utilizing it as animal feed, subsidy on machines like ‘Happy seeder’ generating lesser amount of straw during harvesting, use in cardboard factories, power generation, compost making, new crop varieties producing lesser residue as well as lower wages to carry on manual harvesting were suggested by the sampled farmers to deal with the issue. Creating awareness among farmers about ecoloss and significance of the problem itself at various fora along with strict implementation of the law prohibiting the burning of crop residue can be of further help in handing the major concern of the state.

Adoption Level of Recommended Agricultural Practices by Punjab Farmers

Punjab is predominately an agrarian state and largest contributor of food grains to the central pool. In current scenario, though we have achieved great success in agricultural production and productivity and became not only self reliant but rather surplus producer of many agricultural commodities, but at the same time, we are facing a sort of crisis on many fronts. The rising cost of cultivation, stagnating yields, dwindling underground water reserves, pest resistance, resurgence of new weeds etc. are some of the concerns. To counter balance these issues farmers in the state were resorting to higher doses of nutrients, pesticides, irrigations etc. than the recommended levels. Then there are certain practices regarding residue disposal, seed treatment, soil testing etc. which also have a bearing on sustainability of state agriculture. It was found that though having good farming experience and education level, farmers of the state were not sticking to the recommended practices and resource use levels. Some constraints were cited by the sampled farmers regarding this aspect. These included higher doses of fertilizers and number of irrigations to enhance the productivity, spurious quality of pesticides leading to higher doses, stubble burning due to lack of viable alternative and low awareness about recommendation of soil testing etc. So it was found that farmers equipped with education and expertise in farming were by and large aware about the issues concerning agricultural development, but the constraints emerging mainly due to on-going mono-culture in agricultural production were posing a threat to sustainable growth in the state.

An Estimation of Resource Use Efficiency of Large Farmers in Punjab

Wheat and paddy were the principal crops grown on the large areas of farms in Punjab. The results indicated that the variance parameters o2 and a have positive coefficient and were statistically significant at one per cent level. This provides statistical confirmation that the shortfall of the realized productivity from frontier was due to the technical efficiency and was mainly with in the control of the farmer. The technical inefficiency analysis indicated that there existed a considerable potential for increasing the yield of wheat and paddy on large farms at the existing level of resources and technology. The mean technical efficiency in wheat production on large farms came out to be 88.6, 94.8, and 89.5 per cent for Zone-I, Zone-II and Zone-III. The result signified that farmers of Zone-II did not have much scope to increase productivity of wheat through technical efficiency improvement. While large farmer of Zone-I and Zone-III can increase wheat yield upto11.4 and 10.5 per cent. The mean technical efficiency in paddy production on large farms comes out to be 84.6, 89.40, and 85.75 per cent for Zone-I, Zone-II and Zone-III which signified that the large farmer of all the zones can increase the paddy yield by 15.4, 10.60, and by 14.25 per cent in Zone-I, Zone-II and Zone-III respectively. This necessitates the proper management of variable inputs in all zones.

Dynamics of Energy Use Pattern in Punjab Agriculture

The present study based on secondary data made attempt to examine the energy use pattern in Punjab agriculture. The study shows that Punjab farmers shifted from non-commercial energy sources to commercial energy sources for their various energy needs in agriculture. After 1970–71, the use of commercial energy inputs had been increasing every year and in 2012–13, its share in total energy used in agricultural production was 94.21 per cent, whereas the share of non-commercial energy inputs reduced to 5.79 per cent during this period. Energy used per hectare in the state increased by 558.09 per cent from 1970–71 to 2012–13. Amongst the various commercial energy sources, electricity has shown maximum increase (23.26 times) followed by tractors 19.51 times and electric motors 13.10 times during the period from 1970–71 to 2012–13. All these figures depict the transformation of traditional agriculture to commercialization of agriculture. Moreover, the increasing use of commercial energy on Punjab farms draws our attention to check the use of this valuable and limited resource.

Accessibility of marginal and small farmers to institutional credit in south western Punjab

Punjab agriculture has become capital intensive since the inception of ‘Green Revolution ’. Following technological change and greater need for credit to facilitate the adoption of technology, the question of small farmers ’effective access to institutional finance is of crucial significance. Empirical evidence has indicated higher dependence of marginal and small farm categories on exploitative informal sources of credit, thus making them more vulnerable. It was found that factors like farm size, total annual income, location of the financial institutional agency and purpose of loan were affecting the availability of credit from formal sources of credit in case of sampled farmers. Then, low rate of interest, charged by institutional sources of finance and credit limits formed of borrowers by these agencies emerged as the primary reasons for preferring institutional sources of credit. While lesser formalities, timeliness and easy access were the factors weighing heavily in favour of non-institutional sources of finance.

Nutrient Usage in Punjab Agriculture-Status and Constraints

Many natural resources, which were once regarded as free goods, have now become scarce resources. Economic development affects the environment more often in a negative way, same is true for land use in Punjab agriculture. The profitable combination of rice-wheat crops has led to higher doses of inputs like chemical fertilizers and pesticides. But, the trend undertaken to sustain productivity in an imbalanced way has affected the soil health adversely. Excessive use has created deficiencies of nutrients in the soil leading to higher fertilization, increased costs and squeezing profit margins. Consumption of chemical fertilizers was found to be almost double of Indian consumption in 2012–13. Nutrient cost in Punjab was found to be about 18 per cent of the total operational cost in wheat crop, followed by 12.5 per cent in paddy and nearly eight per cent in case of cotton crop respectively. Sampled farmers in sub-mountainous zone (zone I) were found to be using fertilizer sprays according to recommendation, followed by zone III and lastly by zone II. Zone II is the central plain zone or wheat paddy zone, where farmers were not using fertilizers as per the package of practices. If we see category-wise, small farmers were using fertilizers more optimally than medium and large farmers in the state. The expenditure on fertilizer use was higher than that calculated at recommended level of fertilize use. The prominent reason to use higher levels of fertilizer than recommended was cited as to enhance the yields of crops, followed by maintenance of soil fertility and to cope with deficit rains/water availability. Only 2 per cent of the farmers showed ignorance about proper knowledge regarding fertilizer doses but they highlighted the constraints regarding the issue and the associated environmental problems to be solved.

Organic farming: status and constraints

The success achieved in terms of self-reliance in food production over the last five decades has come at a price in terms of adverse impact on environment affecting physical, financial and general health of the economy. In the wake of various problems and emerging awareness about health hazards due to modern inputs use as well as new avenues in world trade, farmers are turning towards organic agriculture. Adoption of organic farming in Punjab state is lagging behind as compared to national scenario. Punjab comprises only 0.12 percent of total area under organic production in the country. During last five years, production of tea, coffee, spices, fruit and vegetables has shown an increase under organic farming, while of cereals, pulses and oilseeds has declined in the country. But Indian organic exports have shown an increase of 18.5 percent between 2007–08 and 2009–10 and an increase of 15.6 percent in the export value. These products have been well accepted in developed nations of America and Europe. Cumbersome procedure to get organic certification, lack of political will, lack of awareness, initially low yields during conversion period, shortage of organic inputs and supporting infrastructure are the main hindrances in adoption of organic agriculture.

An electricity energy usage and energy subsidy in Punjab agriculture

An electricity as an input is attaining new heights as we are treading on the higher growth path of agricultural production. Like any other technological innovation, the electricity consumption in Punjab was below both in technical and economic potentials in the fifties and sixties. With the advent of high yield varieties of seeds and consequently, the use of fertilizer, necessitated the assured irrigation for crop production. So there has been an upward trend in the consumption of electricity for irrigation purpose since 1970–71. Moreover, the partially charged as well as free electricity has also acted as stimulant for installation of more and more electricity operated tubewells which have resulted in increased electricity energy consumption. Above all, the changing cropping pattern and more and more use of fertilizer made it requisite to consume more water.