Moving out of cotton

Farmers in Kolzari village in Yavatmal district, in the suicide-ridden cotton belt of Vidarbha, have reportedly vowed not to grow cotton any more. Even if driven by desperation, this is a wise move. For the past several years, the cotton crop has proved disastrous for the region's farmers, pushing them into a debt trap and forcing over a thousand among them to take their own lives. This was largely because cotton had become a high-cost, high-risk crop plagued with frequent failures. The existence of the Maharashtra State Cotton Growers' Marketing Federation, which till recently had monopoly over the marketing of the entire produce, had made matters worse because it was perpetually in the red. As such, it failed to ensure remunerative prices and make timely payments. This, therefore, was an ideal situation for traders and input suppliers to turn money lenders and exploit the poor farmers.

Indeed, all these are the symptoms of a more fundamental problem that has led to the current agricultural crisis in many parts of the country, including some of the hitherto progressive agricultural belts. The traditional mixed farming system, involving agriculture and locally relevant allied activities, had the in-built capacity to mitigate risk. But this system has given way to raising the same crops or cropping sequences year after year. Worse still, crops inherently unsuitable for intensive cultivation in a particular agro-climatic zone have got established there. This applies as much to cotton cultivation in Vidarbha as to, say, paddy in Punjab and Haryana, sugarcane in Rajasthan and wheat in West Bengal and Assam. Where Vidarbha is concerned, cotton surely is not the right crop to grow; not at least on the scale and in the manner in which it is being done. That is why the Prime Minister's Rs 3,750-crore package and an additional state package of Rs 1,200 crore aimed, among other things, at offering debt relief failed to improve the situation and the suicides continued. Being a region where monsoon failures are frequent, irrigation facilities sparse and natural water resources on the wane, the Vidarbha belt is innately unsuitable for cotton, which requires high doses of cash inputs, notably pesticides, with uncertain yields.

In fact, the time has come for paddy growers in Punjab and Haryana to reconsider their persistence with this water-intensive crop. The water table in these two granary states has already receded to alarmingly low levels and the day may not be far off when groundwater, the mainstay of agriculture in the area, cannot be extracted any more because the water table has dropped too low. Besides, the geographical location of this region, being at a corner of the country, is also unsuitable for producing this high-volume, low-value grain. As such, paddy growing will become unviable the moment the government withdraws price support and refuses to bear the cost of transporting the produce to distant consumption centres. Similarly, the effort that is on to expand the area under wheat by growing it in states like West Bengal and Assam is sure to pose problems. The humid conditions in these regions are bound to adversely affect the viability of the self-produced wheat seed, forcing farmers to buy fresh seed every season and thus incurring heavy costs. Any failure of the crop for whatever reason would, therefore, prove financially ruinous. Thus, it would be prudent for Krishi Bhawan to take a holistic view of the whole issue and help not only the Vidarbha farmers to diversify their farming but also ensure that cropping patterns everywhere are compatible with their agro-ecological conditions.