Author: Ramesh Vinayak
Publication: India Today
Date: August 7, 2006
Introduction: Farmers in Haryana have been
persuaded to give up growing a lucrative crop because of the harm it causes
to the earth
For the past six years, Jasbir Singh had been
reaping rich benefits from saathi-a fast maturing and therefore lucrative
variety of common paddy sown after the wheat harvest at the end of April.
Then, three weeks ago, onlookers watched aghast as the 33-year-old ploughed
a tractor through his fields in Akkanwali of Haryana's Fatehabad district
and mowed down 10 acres of standing saathi crop.
Jasbir's drastic step was the result of an
interface between farmers and state agriculture department officials on the
adverse affects of the saathi crop on the fertility of the subsoil and the
water table. Jasbir did not have to look too far for confirmation: the water
table in his area had indeed been shrinking by 10 ft every year ever since
he took to growing saathi because it was known to mature in just 60 days.
Akkanwali village is now at the forefront
of a campaign against the sowing of saathi, spearheaded by Rajesh Khullar,
director, agriculture. Since February, Khullar held a series of interactions
to spread awareness among farmers in the five central districts of Karnal,
Kaithal, Fatehabad, Yamunanagar and Kurukshetra, which form the only 'sweet
water' belt of Haryana. As a result the cultivation of the crop has dropped
from 35,000 hectares last year to barely 1,000 hectares this season. In Akkanwali
village alone, the area under saathi has dropped from 550 acres last year
to nine this year. "It's a change spurred by convincing farmers, not
coercing them," says Khullar.
'Saathi', an early sowing variety recommended
for the rain-fed hilly terrains, was not known to Haryana and Punjab until
the 1990s, when it caught the fancy of farmers as a quickie crop sown between
the wheat and paddy harvest. It fetched farmers profits as high as Rs 10,000
an acre from unscrupulous rice millers who used it either to adulterate expensive
Basmati rice or to replace illegally off loaded government stocks. Its drawback
was the amount of water it required-much higher than regular paddy did. Moreover,
the crop was grown during the dry and hot months of May and June, when water
loss due to evaporation was maximum.
When talking to farmers, Khullar used a practical
approach and earthy idioms, likening the earth to one's mother and water to
one's father to convey grim facts like how a kg of saathi consumed 5,500 litres
of water. Farmers have pledged to stop growing the crop and have begun to
actively spread the campaign in saathi-growing areas. Says Sukhwinder Singh,
a member of panchayat samiti at Tohana. "It has grown into a movement
of the farmers".
