The pace of growth of horticulture cultivation has remained below expectation in Haryana due to lack of awareness, inadequate irrigation facilities, insufficient post harvest infrastructure, price fluctuations, among other factors.
Even as the horticulture appears as an alternative to break down the prevailing unsustainable cropping pattern in Haryana in the past two years, several factors continued to have negative impact on crops yield and expected income of the farmers, who are still hesitant to divert towards horticulture cultivation.
This has been revealed in a recent study undertaken by Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Centre (CRRID) to evaluate impact of higher allocation of horticulture budget from 2014-15 to 2016-17 on its activities in Haryana.
The study pointed out that non adoption of horticulture cultivation by non horticulturist sample households was due to inadequate marketing mechanism to dispose-off the horticulture produce at reasonable prices in the study area. Being a perishable nature of the horticulture produce, farmers cannot hold it up to fetch higher prices at some later stages, it stated.
Apart from this, inadequate irrigation facilities have also been considered as one of the major hurdles in crop diversification particularly in favour of horticulture crops in the state.
Initial high cost, lack of awareness and lack of operational skill & training were other major constraints in adoption of the latest irrigation technologies in horticulture cultivation in the study area.
For the study, the CRRID had selected four districts one from each cluster (four clusters made by government), namely Sonipat from cluster I, Sirsa from cluster II, Yamuna Nagar from cluster III and Gurgaon from cluster IV taking into account district wise the highest share of area in total area under horticulture crops.
According to the report, there are huge potentials for horticulture cultivation in Haryana and during the period 2014-15 to 2016-17, the plan outlay of Haryana Government for horticulture cultivation was doubled.
“Out of the total 220 horticulturist sample households, only 83 households availed the subsidy for various purposes in the study area during the period 2014-15 to 2016-17 while 51.82 per cent households reported an increase in their income levels with horticulture cultivation,” it stated.
Majority of the sample households who reported increase in their income after adoption of horticulture crops were big farm households as major beneficiaries. Also, a majority of the big farm households were the main beneficiaries of the credit from banks and cooperative societies.
Giving more details, the report stated, “The area under horticulture crops for the sampled households has increased by 22.15 per cent and 33.57 per cent in Kharif and Rabi seasons respectively during the study period. The production of the horticulture crops has also been increased with a growth rate of 31.21 per cent and 28.17 per cent in Kharif and Rabi seasons respectively for the sampled households during the period under consideration. But the pace of growth in productivity of horticulture crops was not found very exciting in the state.”
The productivity of horticulture crops in Rabi season has even decreased during the period from 2014-15 to 2016-17, the study said.
During the period under consideration, average net income of the horticulturist households has slightly increased by Rs 1835 per acre in absolute terms from Rs 8,713 to Rs 10,548, with a growth rate of 21.06 per cent, from horticulture cultivation in the study area. However, majority of the sample households who reported increase in their income were big farm households, the report added.
A perceptible number of the respondents during the study pointed out that they were not getting the adequate amount of government subsidies timely. It has also been observed during the field survey that there was a lack of awareness about the schemes of the State Government among the farmers in Haryana.The report has concluded that due to persistence of certain major problems like lack of awareness, inadequate irrigation facilities, insufficient post harvest infrastructure including cold storage, inadequate marketing mechanism, inefficient transportation connectivity, price fluctuations and shortage of trained manpower, the pace of growth of horticulture cultivation in the state has been below expectations during the study period.
Notably, the National Horticulture Mission (NHM) was launched in 2005-06 for the development of horticulture sector. Haryana Government had also chalked out Horticulture Vision Document (2016) which claimed that “Haryana is moving towards golden revolution and emerged in the forefront in the fruit and vegetable production and ranked 7th to 11th position in potato, pea, cauliflower, onion, brinjal, cabbage and tomato production.”
In the past, Haryana Agriculture and Farmer Welfares’ Minister, OP Dhankar had led state delegation to United States, Australia, Fiji and New Zealand to study latest methods in the field of agriculture and horticulture. However, the outcome of such foreign jaunts is yet to be seen at grassroot level in the state.