Cabinet approves new law, allows farmland for other use.
The Uttarakhand cabinet on Tuesday gave its nod to a new farm policy with focus on Special Agriculture Zones (SAZs), but removed its main feature pertaining to prohibition of farmlands from being used for other purpose like industrialisation.
The voluntary land consolidation is one of the key features of an SAZ in the new agriculture policy. “Under the SAZ, we are planning to set up self-employment agriculture industry (SAI) units through integrated farming system approach,” said Agriculture Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat, who championed the cause of the SAZ to protect the agriculture land and provide food security to the state.
Under the SAZs, the government proposes to have agro-based units like fisheries, tea gardens, dairy farming and various other agriculture and horticulture activities. The government would try to generate new employment opportunities and check the scourge of migration from the hills through the new policy, Rawat said.
The new agriculture policy came after the government approved the new APMC Act in April that seeks to promote private players in the sector and allows setting up of private mandis.
For the SAZ, the government also announced special incentives like special grants, availability of 24 hour power supply and free soil tests.
Under the SAZ proposal, the government would set up special collection and processing centres for the benefit of farmers. The special feature of the SAZ would be voluntary land consolidation since most of the land holdings in the state are fragmented.
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The government has also made special provision for giving grants. For instance, Nakholi village in Pauri district, which has already adopted the voluntary land consolidation, has been given the status of an SAZ. For this village, the government also announced a special grant of Rs 35 lakh.
However, the cabinet did not approve the main feature of the draft policy that had clearly stated that there should be no industrialisation on agricultural land in Uttarakhand and proposed to bar the purchase of agriculture land for other use.
“The cabinet did not approve this particular clause of barring the purchase of agriculture land,” said Chief Secretary Subash Kumar. Rawat. Much of the agriculture land have already fallen into the hands of builders and businessmen in recent years. Government sources say around 24,000 hectare of rural land have been taken away for both urbanisation and industrial programmes in the past decade.