E-Paper
7 Haryana districts fail to achieve DSR sowing target
Haryana’s cash-incentive scheme to cut area under paddy cultivation by promoting DSR technique attracted a good response from farmers despite seven districts of the state failing to achieve the given target
The cash-incentive scheme of the Haryana government launched to cut area under water-guzzling paddy cultivation by promoting the direct seeded rice (DSR) technique attracted a good response from farmers despite seven districts of the state failing to achieve the given target.
As per the latest figures of the state agriculture department, over 22,685 farmers of the state have registered their 1.08 lakh acres for the direct seeded rice scheme. For this, the government has announced ₹4,000 per acre cash subsidy against the set target of 1 lakh acres in 12 districts to promote water conservation encouraging the farmers to grow paddy without puddling.
The figures revealed that several districts have missed the target as out of the total 1,08,118 acres registered under the scheme, 68 percent or 74,150 acres are from five districts with the maximum 18,389 acres are from Sirsa, 17,588 from Jind, 14,063 from Karnal, 12,843 from Fatehabad and 11,267 from Kaithal district. Even several districts where the paddy sowing largely depends on groundwater, including Kurukshetra, Ambala, Panipat, Yamunanagar, Hisar, Rohtak and Sonepat, have missed the target.
The agriculture department had set the target of bringing 11,000 acres each in Kaithal and Jind under the DSR technique followed by 10,000 acres each in Karnal and Kurukshetra, 9,000 acres in Fatehabad; 8,000 acres each in Sirsa, Hisar, Rohtak; 7,000 acres in Ambala and 6,000 acres each in Yamunanagar, Panipat and Sonepat districts.
Officials monitoring the scheme said that these are not final figures as registration of the scheme is over now and the physical verification will start after the data of the registered farmers will be shared with the district and block-level teams.
The incentives will be deposited into the accounts of the beneficiaries after ground-level physical verification as several farmers do not adopt the scheme even after the registrations, the officials said.
Karam Chand, deputy director, agriculture, Kaithal, said they are happy with the response but they will find out the actual data as a team of officials will visit villages for the physical verification of all registered farmers.
On why the district failed to achieve the target to bring 10,000 acres under the DSR, Kurukshetra DDA Pradeep Meel said, “There is a good response from the farmers in Kurukshetra. This year farmers have registered for 5,125 acres against 2,200 acres last year.”
The paddy is sown on around 13 lakh hectares in the state and the scheme aims at bringing the area down.
The Haryana government has set a target to diversify at least one lakh acres under the “Mera Pani Meri Virasat” scheme and under this scheme, farmers will be given a cash incentive of ₹7,000 per acre for growing alternate crops, including maize, pulses and cereals, even for keeping the fields empty.
Sumita Misra, additional chief secretary to government, Haryana, agriculture and farmers’ welfare department, who introduced this new technique to save groundwater, said, “The cropping practice education was done and we have also approved 50% subsidy to about 356 DSR machines in the state.” She said the department had decided to make it a movement.
