By Firstdespatch Desk Nov 02, 2022
Agartala, November 2 (FD) Even as the rainfall in the state was deficit by 17 percent, its impact on the forthcoming Aman cropping would be very less.
Aman is a traditional paddy cropping cycle, like Aush, Boro etc.
Speaking to reporters at the state secretariat, Agriculture Secretary Apurba Roy said while there was a 17 percent shortage of rainfall till now, which has impacted the Aman cropping cycle, the Department is hopeful of getting paddy production like the previous years.
As per the agriculture department reports, farmers planted paddy in 1,44,120 hectare out of 1,48,000 hectare land under paddy cultivation in the state during the Aman crop cycle due to low rainfall.
However, the officials said the planted area amounts to 97 percent of the entire land under paddy cultivation and since a vast majority of the traditional paddy land was planted, the rainfall deficit wouldn't have any major impact.
Rainfall shortage impacted the previous Aaush crop cycle of paddyc earlier this year as well.
Earlier in August this year, Tripura Agriculture minister Pranajit Singha Roy said the state was faced with possibilities of 59,570 MT foodgrain shortage as per preliminary estimates this year as aaush and jhum cultivation couldn't be done in 25 thousand hectare cultivable land due to dearth of rainfall.
Roy said his government had set targets of cultivating 30,000 hectare land in aaush cropping season this year in addition to target of shifting cultivation in 15,500 hectare land.
By similar estimates, over 9 thousand MT crop shortage in the Aman crop cycle is likely.
However, Agriculture Assistant Director Debabrata Majumder explained that the department is going for extensive conversion from conventional farming to Integrated Crop Management (ICM).
ICM is a system of crop production that aims to enhance natural resources while producing food on an economically viable setting.
Assistant Director Majumder said while System of Rice Intensification (SRI) and ICM was practised earlier in the state to boost paddy production, the department is adopting such largescale conversion to integrated management for the first time, which is expected to boost the overall production to counter-balance the impact of 3 percent less-planted land.
As part of its effort to encourage farmers, th government provides some financial support and agri-input assistance for converting paddy fields to integrated crop management.
As per department estimates, 1.48 lakh hectare land is under Amon crop cover in the state. Roughly 26 percent of the state's geographical area is under agriculture cover including paddy, vegetables and other agri products. FD JK