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| AGRICULTURE TRIBUNE | Monday, May 28, 2001, Chandigarh, India |
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R. K. Goel Utilisation on wildlife is as old as mankind itself but the conscious use of wild genetic resources of plants as well as animals is a 20th-century phenomenon. Many outstanding technological advances in yield or quality of the commercial crops resulted from one or a few genes from the wild relatives of the domesticated plant species. These wild species were mainly collected from the “cradle of flowering plant evolution”, the tropics, including areas in South West and South East Asia. Strategy for empowering small farmers Implementation of WRC projects not satisfactory |
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Challenges to dairy farmers in summer The summer months are unbearable to human and animal alike. The fury of the blistering sun rages unabated and the mercury is liable to touch the peak at most places in the northern parts. The alarming temperature is crucial to reproductive failures and embryonic mortality. The feed intake is reduced and milk production is grossly affected. The animals become vulnerable to tick infestation which are infamous have to face these challenges with the precautions and measures at his disposal as mentioned below. Control of ticks: The control of ticks has always been a major problem and needs to be tackled effectively and instantly. Heavy tick infestation causes worry to farmers because it interferes with feeding which may lead to loss of production and weight gain. Besides the role of ticks in the production of diseases heavy infestation can cause direct losses. Being blood sucker they cause anaemia. The control of ticks by dipping or spraying is now on a much higher footing as the individual animals can be effectively treated by any one of the available ectoparasiticide. The choice of ectoparasiticide depends mainly on its high efficacy, lethal action and prolonged residual effect. The insecticide should be hard on ticks and soft in skin. It should not give any side effects and has the maximum safety margin. Periodic dipping or spraying is necessary for the constant reduction of tick population. Complete wetting of the animal should be done to have better results. These days highly effective extoparasiticides with broad spectrum activity against ticks, flies, lice and mites are available. These are to be used in accordance with instructions. It is also essential to spray the insecticides on the floor and crevices of the sheds. Much is still required to be done to invent a foolproof treatment for instant and lasting control of tick infestations. Injection of Invermectin is also recommended but its action lasts few days and has to be repeated. Protection against thermal stress: — Drinking water 3-4 times a day. — Showering/splashing of water on the body thrice a day. — Keeping the floor of the shed cool by sprinkling cold water. — Wallowing — buffaloes are made to wallow in clusters in ponds, river or canals for hours together. These days wallowing though cheapest and least laborious, can not be practised for want of scarcity of land. Housing: Feeding: Plantation: Disease Control: |
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Wild genetic resources and their conservation Utilisation on wildlife is as old as mankind itself but the conscious use of wild genetic resources of plants as well as animals is a 20th-century phenomenon. Many outstanding technological advances in yield or quality of the commercial crops resulted from one or a few genes from the wild relatives of the domesticated plant species. These wild species were mainly collected from the “cradle of flowering plant evolution”, the tropics, including areas in South West and South East Asia. Wild species are threatened by habitat loss, overexploitation and introduced species, apart from many other hidden risks. Farmers, processors and consumers demand uniformity in production techniques, maturity and crop quality. Consequent upon this narrowing genetic base of commercially important crop varieties, bio-resources are in immediate danger of serious losses from the ravages of major diseases or insects of both. When genetic uniformity becomes the cause of genetic vulnerability, genetic diversity is the only insurance against it. Recent advances is genetic engineering offer tools to move genes across the sexual barriers. Consequently, these new capabilities have enhanced the economic values of biodiversity. Wild genetic resources can be conserved either in their natural habitat — say, in a nature reserve, sanctuary or a natural park (in situ conservation) or outside the natural habitat; either the whole organism (plant/animal), say, in a botanical garden, plantation, zoo or breed farm; or just the germplasm (seed, pollen, ova, budwood or cells) in a seed bank, spermbank, etc (ex-situ conservation). Both these types of conservation may involve “base collections” for a long term security of genes; and/or “active/working collections” for the short-term need of the breeders. By far the greatest amount of progress has been made in the ex-situ conservation of crop genetic resources. The International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, (IPGRI), an autonomous international scientific organisation under the aegis of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations, promoted development of an impressive network of national and international “base collections” at genetic resource centres of “gene banks” covering more than 20 of the world’s most important crops, including cereal (food) crops, legumes, vegetables and plantation crops. The job of collection conservation, documentation, evaluation and use of plant germplasm is undertaken to raise the standard of living and welfare of the people throughout the world with financial support mobilised from the member countries of the IPGRI, including India, the United National Development Programme and the World Bank. The National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR) at New Delhi is a representative organisation of the IPGRI in India. Main activities of a gene bank include acquisition, maintenance, distribution, characterisation and evaluation of the germplasm and to prepare management descriptors. Seed propagated crops, with seeds that can be dried and cold stored for up to a century, like cereals and legumes, are relatively easy to maintain. Crops that are maintained vegetatively (like banana) or crops whose seeds cannot be dried and then stored without killing them e.g. mango, chestnuts, coffee, citrus and many timber crops are more difficult to handle. In situ gene banks, at present, are more a hope than a reality. There are many national parks, biosphere reserves and countless other potential areas, but the number of genuine in situ seed banks is very few. Of these, two are located in CIS states to protect wild forage grasses, wild apricot and pistachio; one in Sri Lanka for wild medicinal plants and one is in India to conserve wild relatives of banana, citrus, rice, sugarcane and mango. National parks and biosphere reserves are the philosophies that could be extended to include wild plant genetic resources. This should be followed by a systematic scanning of the primary and secondary gene pools in search of diverse gene sources for all the economic traits. This alone would truly mean biodiversity conservation. Since most accessions in gene banks are primitive cultivars or land races collected from the farmers in the developing countries, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992 recommended establishment of an international ‘gene fund’ from taxes payable on commercialised material used in developed countries to be sued to compensate local farming communities in the third world for their past and present contributions to biodiversity conservation. Wild genetic resources, truly represent “a heritage of mankind” and should be treated as such. |
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Strategy for empowering small farmers While the population of small and marginal farmers has been bulging — currently estimated over one-third of the total population of the country and nearly 50 per cent of the rural population, hardly any tangible and sustainable income-yielding programmes have been planned for this section. The result is that an overwhelming majority of them — practically all — fall below the poverty line and again a substantial number of them fall in the poorest category. How depressing is this problem already and worsening further becomes evident from the experience of leading agricultural area of this country which has witnessed a lasting thrust of Green Revolution power a substantial post-Independence period. Simultaneously, the number of small and marginal farmers in Punjab has been fast rising. Of course, it is the result of growing pressure of rural population leading to subdivision of already small holdings. It is estimated that quite a large chunk of area — and just think that already nearly 85 per cent of land is under plough which had reduced area under green cover and forests to an unsafe level, has already been subdivided into uneconomic holdings which do not yield sufficient income. A study made sometime back by Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) researchers had brought out the fact that average holding of a small farmer yielded income which was barely sufficient to be compared with the mostly salary of a newly recruited bottom-level functionary in the government department. Thus, small farms are not economically viable and studies made have further confirmed that confronted with such a situation several of these families have either leased their land to medium or large farmers on mostly long-term contracts accepting small lease rent in return/or they have sold their pieces wherever possible and taken to alternative low income-yielding professions, including migration to other areas where conditions have been equally worse. In nutshell these small farmers are in a peculiar situation. Neither they are able to earn sufficient income to support their families nor they are able to find worthwhile alternative avenues. Such a situation faced by the agriculturally prosperous Punjab is a good example to show where we are heading to with rising partitions of already small pieces of land. Either this leads to the emergence of a class of better off farmers through the backdoor who are able to acquire these lands under the lease system or whenever these are cultivated by farmers themselves they face almost starvation situation — not able to ear enough to lead a minimum sustainable living. The star question that arises is/what is the way out of this vicious circle? How could further partitioning of small farms be avoided or else how these could be made economically viable even after partitioning? One major remedy to avoid this happening is to create alternative employment avenues for the family members where surplus manpower could be conveniently absorbed and pressure on uneconomic farms would lessen which, in turn, would permit fewer members on land to derive higher income with their efforts. Even this may not prove sufficient with size of land already existing. Thus, it would call for consolidation of small holdings, say through a system of cooperative farming. But then the experience shows that such farming has not generally proved successful for several reasons. However, the main reason for the failure of this system has been the clash of interest between the parties pooling their resources under such farming where members with higher income and resources would not pull on well with those with lower resources and skills. Thus, if we could encourage pooling of land and other resources among like-minded people with the same level of income and other interests, this system should work. Of course still it would need a lot of action, encouragement and guidance to the cooperative farmers to make it a success. Also sufficient care would be needed to avoid clash of family interests which can at any time scuttle the whole programme. This would call for a radical change in the existing cropping pattern and substituting it with alternative, more income-yielding ones. As well as the limited current farm cycle confined mainly to wheat-paddy crops — though these have been at the root of Green Revolution in northern India — has proved quite harmful to the ecology of this area and has brought several adverse consequences, including high waterlogging. Certainly this system has to be discontinued and replaced by alternative crops and activities which are more environment-friendly and at the same time yield sufficient income. This is where our farm scientists and departments of agriculture should put their attention. Here we would have to encourage a basket of high income-yielding activities, including areas like mushroom cultivation, floriculture, selected vegetable growing, pisciculture, horticulture and the like. But while encouraging these areas, which might look to be quite attractive and we might succeed on having favourable results, unless we are simultaneously prepared for scientific storage, distribution and marketing them — they would bring their own problems of plenty, crash in prices, thereby causing more misery to the farmers who would even go back to their traditional products. While strategic changes are needed in existing basket of production in the interest of ecology as well as yielding higher income to farmers, this would only be possible if we have a good package of interrelated services to boost the morale of farmers and once they find success in it there is no reason why this experiment should not succeed. Thus a lot of home work would be required before we are able to empower our growing number of small farmers to change over to new mode of production. One of the major reasons for the slow growth of agro-industries in the country has been the lacklustre approach to these industries adopted by the government as well as the private sector and also the limited market that yet exists. That shows we have failed to tap the otherwise promising market through regular programmes on the media, demonstrations and sales promotion programmes both in the urban and rural areas, making people aware of the benefits derived from such products which save the country several hundred crores of rupees lost at present due to high wastage of fruits, vegetables and other farm products when they fail to be scientifically preserved and more so under harsh conditions of our warm climate. |
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Implementation of WRC projects not satisfactory Implementation of the water resources consolidation project in Haryana is not considered to be satisfactory in view of substantial shortfalls in the achievement of targets. The water resources consolidation project (WRCP), taken up with the World Bank assistance in June, 1994, was to be implemented over a period of six years — by June, 2000. Due to slow progress the Irrigation Department had sent a proposal to the World Bank for extension of the project by another two years. It is learnt that the World Bank has given extension for one year. It is aimed at achieving an increase in surface water supplies by 953 million M3 by reducing water seepage losses (through bank strengthening and lining of channels) and increase irrigated area by 1.56 lakh hectares. The department could generate 428 million M3 (45 per cent of what was envisaged in the project document) additional surface water. Though the original project life was over in June, 2000. 44 per cent of the available World Bank credit remained unutilised as of June, 2000. A sum of Rs 54.98 crore was incurred as extra expenditure on avoidable expenditure on account of various factors like delays in decisions, defective estimates, delayed drawings, inadequate factors like delays in contract management, etc. Monitoring by the high-level committee was not effective. Against the Budget provision of Rs 958.16 crore during 1994-2000, Rs 821.05 crore (86 per cent) was spent, whereas the physical progress varied between 3 and 67 per cent on different components. A shortfall in expenditure was attributed to slow progress of works. The Engineer-in Chief, Irrigation, stated in June, 2000, that variations in physical and financial achievements were bound to occur as different categories of works, that is, lining, strengthening, silt clearance and structures were involved which were not taken up simultaneously. The reply by the CAG was not considered tenable as the works were spread across long distances of several canals, distributaries, minors and water courses. Therefore, the works could have been taken simultaneously. The department attributed (March, 1999, and March,2000) the delay to non-clearance of project by the Planning Commission up to January 1995 (nine months), investment clearance of the project by the Government of India in December, 1995 ( 12 months), loss of six months due to unprecedented floods during 1995, slow flow of funds from the Finance Department, lengthy procurement procedure for civil works and delay in finalisation of consultancy services. The CAG says that the reply of the department was not factually correct as even the funds released by the government were not fully spent. Further, the department also failed to engage the consultant in time. During 1994-2000, the Engineer-in-Chief released Rs 24.03 crore to the Haryana State Minor Irrigation Tubewell Corporation (HSMITC) for rehabilitation of water courses, augmentation of tubewells, etc. However, actual expenditure incurred was Rs 2.38 crore (9.90 per cent) as of March, 2000. Release of funds despite the meagre expenditure resulted in blocking of funds of Rs 21.65 crore. The primary objective of the rehabilitation of the existing canals and drainage system was to invest in one-time repair and rehabilitation of the existing systems, both canals and drainage and bring the systems back to the acceptable performing standards. During 1994-2000, against the Budget provision of Rs 173.17 crore, Rs 157.85 crore (91 per cent) was spent both for the western Yamuna Canal and Bhakra Canal systems. However, the shortfall under the rehabilitation component, in lining and bank strengthening works of main or branch canal in the western Yamuna Canal (WYC) area was 73 and 66 per cent, respectively. The shortfall in providing structures for head regulators was 95 per cent and for bridges 67 per cent. For the Bhakra Canal (BC) area, the shortfall for lining of distributaries was 81 per cent and for bank strengthening works between 26 and 69 per cent during 1994-2000. Under “modernisation” component, the shortfall in lining of main or branch canal under the WYC system was 74 per cent and under the BC system, 98 per cent during 1994-2000. In the BC system, there were 56 to 84 per cent shortfall in construction of structures “regulators, bridges, ghats, outlets” etc in this period. In 14 divisions, quantities of works executed for 16 works exceeded the permissible limit of 5 per cent in comparison to those specified in the agreements and involved extra expenditure of Rs 32.75 crore which indicated inadequate site survey. In eight divisions test-checked, 77 works relating to silt clearance works involving the expenditure of Rs 35 lakh was irregularly split up into 212 estimates to avoid sanction of higher authorities. It has been further pointed out that the cost of original works was irregularly charged to operation and maintenance component resulting in a loss of financial assistance of Rs 1.06 crore from the World Bank. Delay in the completion of base line survey by consultants resulted in the non-implementation of their suggestions for implementation of the project. |
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Farm operations for MAY Horticultural operations Light annual pruning (i.e. heading back of 25 per cent growth plus general thinning out of diseased, broken and crisscross branches) should be practised. After pruning, the plants should be applied with 100 kg of well-rotten farmyard measure to a full-grown tree. — To avoid the adverse effect of hot weather on fruit trees apply whitewash on the trunks of the trees, if not done earlier. — To maintain good health and ensure regular cropping in kinnow, the fruits on young trees apply whitewash on the trunks of the trees, if not done earlier. — To maintain good health and ensure
regular cropping in kinnow, the fruits on young trees must be thinned out judiciously soon after setting. — To the ber trees, farmyard manure should be applied after pruning. The recommended dose of CAN to citrus trees and CAN, super phosphate and muriate of potash to guava should be given by the end of this month or during early June. — During summer, splitting of fruits is quite common in litchi, pomegranate, citrus and grapes. Water spray may prove useful in keeping the ambient atmosphere of the fruit humid as moisture has a good local effect on the fruit against splitting. — To peach and plum trees give frequent irrigations for proper development of fruit size and better quality. To grapes, apply irrigation at weekly intervals during this month. The young litchi plants may need irrigation twice a week during May. — Zinc deficiency in citrus and palm can be controlled by giving foliar spray with 0.3 per cent sulphate solution. — To regulate the winter season crop of guava, spray 10 per cent urea on trees when the maximum flowers have opened. Also withholding irrigation. — Harvesting of fruits of peach, plum, phalsa, papaya and mature bunches of perlette grapes may be undertaken and marketed after proper grading and packing. — Spray 500 g Sevin/Hexavin (50 WP) (Carvarli) or 350 ml Thiodan (35 EC) or 250 ml Rogor ( 30 EC) (Dimethoate) in 250 litres of water to control leaf hoppers in mango and aphids in peach and pear. To check the attack of insect-pests in citrus, a third spray of 625 ml of Nuvacron 35 SL (Monocrotophose) or 670 ml of Rogor 30 EC (Dimethoate) in 500 litres of water per acre should be given. — Spray 20 ppm of 2,4-D in the first week to check fruit drop in mango. Dairy and animal health — Silent heat is a problem, especially in buffaloes. Watch the animals in the morning and evening for heat symptoms. Get the animals inseminated in mid-heat. — Get your livestock vaccinated in this month against the H.S. (gal ghotu) and black quarter (pati soj) diseases. This will protect them during monsoon months when these diseases spread. — Give the maximum amount of green fodder. — Save your animals from ticks, lice and flies. These suck blood, cause irritation and spread diseases. Due precautions should be taken while applying the insecticide on the animal body. Follow the instructions of veterinarian/manufacturers strictly. — Keep the animals in shade and provide clean fresh drinking water ad lib. — Due to sunstroke or if an animal starts bleeding from nose, don’t disturb it much and pour ice-cold water over face and head and keep its head lifted. Transfer the animal to a cool shady place. Consult veterinarian at the earliest. — In the case of high rise of temperature in dairy animals, get their blood tested for protozoan diseases from the Department of Parasitology, PAU, Ludhiana, or state district laboratories near to your place. — Progressive Farming, PAU |
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