Revitalization of field crop enterprises

Revitalization of field crop enterprises

The qualitative assessment of agriculture development in the past four decades reveals a distinct path – barter system to subsistence farming and then moving into a semi-commercial economy. While following this path, the overriding policy of the MoA has been to achieve certain level of self-sufficiency in cereals¹² and buy the rest from the revenue generated by export of cash crops to achieve national food security. Closer examination shows that while the food crops production remained largely subsistence in nature, there was a steady drive on the promotion of cash crops given their comparative advantages. As a result, the export of cash crops and the revenue thereof have been growing over the years. The export value of the four main cash crops - oranges, potatoes, apples and cardamom - was Nu. 522.065 million in 2005¹³.

Field crops form the main staple food. Food being the basic nourishment for a healthy and productive life, it is the ultimate source of energy for all productive human activities. Generally, only after the basic needs for food is fulfilled, people explore other money making opportunities to further enhance their well being. Therefore, those crops which constitute staple food of majority of the population are important as the basic source of energy and they invariably carry cultural and social significance. In addition they also have national food security and other considerations of strategic nature. However, with the emergence of free trade driven world economy, these characteristics of food crops are becoming less obvious.

The SGNH sets strict criteria to identify field crops and products thereof (after product development) that have potential and competitive edge in the market (local and outside) for production on commercial scale. If we consider these criteria only from commercial production and market angles, field crops have limited scope given the narrow production base and the low economies of scale. In addition, across the border competition is perceived as a serious obstacle to field crops production beyond subsistence scale. However, giving due weight to other equally important parameters such as import substitution, income generation, livelihood and employment opportunities, national food security, agriculture trade balance and as staple diets, rice, oil seed crops and maize have production potential in certain pockets in the country provided factors that affect production efficiencies are addressed.

There are common and specific constraints that restrict field crops production beyond subsistence nature. The common constraints are:

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  Narrow land resource base with only 7.8% of the country under arable agriculture;
  
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  Narrow land resource base does not generate the economies of scale;
  
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  Lack of high quality farm infrastructures;
  
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  Main production resource – water is scarce when and where it is needed;
  
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  Field crops production is more labour intensive than other forms of farming;
  
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  Farm labour shortage and the difficulty of mechanization make growing field crops beyond self-feeding the last option;
  
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  Damage of crops by wild life acts as the proverbial last straw on the farmers’ backs;
  
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  Stiff competition from across the border for markets acts as deterrents;
  
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  Absence of road access for free movements of inputs and produces restrict production initiatives; and
  
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  There are production management deficiencies for field crops.
  

Bhutan being a mountainous country with only small strips of flat areas in certain parts of the southern foothills, arable land is a premium. Our present rice growing areas are mainly located in river valleys of mid and high altitude areas. This is because significant land areas in the southern belt remain mostly uncultivated while about 50% may be under a single crop in a year. Such a small and scattered land resource with major chunk of potential area not being utilized has resulted in shortage of food crops, especially rice and edible oils.

The southern belt has a projected command area of 15,090 ha, 40% of the total area under rice in the country. With assured irrigation, double cropping of rice is technically feasible. With 100% of the area under two crops of rice at a modest yield level of 2 MT/ha, the estimated production is more than 60,000 MT. With assured water and good production management, experts comfortably put the yield level at 3 MT/ha. Therefore, there is potential to grow rice and reduce the imports to a minimum level and subsequently go for total import substitution.

In order to bring efficiencies in the overall system, land uses must be determined by land capabilities and the competing economic benefits. The best way to rationalize the land use will be to separate 60% as forest for all times. Since the main function of this land use category is for environmental services, steep areas (above 51 degrees), core protected areas and biological corridors, scattered and small settlements with steep agriculture land should fall under this category. In addition, good forest for timber production through dynamic management may be included under this category. After keeping aside the 60%, the remaining areas must come as a common kitty to be divided among different land use categories based on land capabilities and competing economic benefits.

The main strategies must revolve around providing effective services and creating the conducive environment required to increase production and productivity. The areas that need focus are:

The southern belt needs assured irrigation water as the first priority for production of rice and oil seed crops. Therefore, investment is needed to develop high quality infrastructure. In order to make good investment, feasibility study for rice and oil seed crops production with the development of high quality irrigation and allied infrastructures needs to be done. As the belt falls under a fragile foot hill zone, irrigation development with buried hume pipes as the main conveyance structure seems to be more appropriate and therefore will be explored. Experience indicates that such a system will be more economical in the long term though the cost of construction will be higher in the short term. Since the command areas are bigger, the volume of construction will be higher and must be mechanized to speed up the progress of the work. To aid mechanization, hume pipe spinning units will be set up to reduce the cost of construction and to bring standardized quality of construction. In mid and high altitude regions, the quality of irrigation canals will be improved by using prefabricated canal sections. Prefabricated canal sections of portable sizes will be produced by batching plants set up at strategic locations.

(ii) Research

There is need to conduct need-based research related to field crops production. For the southern belt, suitable rice varieties (quality and yield) is limited, though work is going on for about fifteen lines to screen them for suitable varieties. Research will focus more on this area. In addition, there is a need to develop production management packages for rice, covering soil/nutrient, pest and water management. In high altitude areas, cold tolerant short duration rice varieties to fit into the rainfall pattern needs to be developed.
(iii) Extension

An aggressive extension approach will be adopted. Extension is mainly involved in communication of information on available technologies. There is a need to go beyond dissemination through proactive mobilization of farmers to achieve targets in production. For this to happen, there is need to change the extension deployment system. Therefore, in potential areas more extension personnel will be deployed and will be backed up by subject matter specialists to plan and work together in a result oriented manner. In the present system, extension lack supervision and guidance from Dzongkhag, regional and the central agencies. Also there is conflict or mis-match between the objectives of different agencies who push work to the extension. The extension will focus more on issues of production management. Their skills will be developed through training on the commodity he/she is responsible to promote. Private sector and cooperatives must be encouraged to deal with supply of production inputs, while the government may take regulatory roles.

Full marketing support will be provided to the producers. Besides creating marketing facilities, market information on prices and demand of produces will be given to the farmers on timely manner. In order to plan production by farmers, price forecasts generated through market intelligence will be made for important commodities. The marketing agency will assume facilitating role while the actual market transactions will be encouraged to be done by the private sector and cooperatives.

Product development and value addition are needed. Maize as a raw material to animal feed industry and conversion of maize to kharang to capture the school feeding program of WFP will be explored. Other areas of product development from maize like breakfast cereals, sip, high quality ara and singchang need to be studied in terms of quality of the products vis-à-vis markets. For rice, one-stop units in rice growing areas that deal in collection, milling, grading, bagging, branding and marketing will result in economy of scale and create confidence both in growers and consumers and should be encouraged to be done by cooperatives or the private sector. The oilseed crops will be extracted into edible oils of various qualities. The technology and the equipment of various performance levels are available.

A need-based capacity development plan will address capacity requirements for enhanced services delivery to commercial scale production. Capacity development is expected to be required in special areas like building high quality irrigation systems, research into product development or value addition etc.

In order to offset the impact of labour shortage, farm mechanization in the southern belt will be encouraged. To bring the economies of scale, land pooling will also be encouraged. If a large tract of forest land is converted to agriculture, lease farming by private firms will be allowed and encouraged. As farm mechanization is capital intensive, hiring of farm equipment is seen as a better option to start with. Farm machineries like tractor, transplanter, harvester, winnower, rotary weeder will be made available to the farmers on hiring basis. Private sector involvement to provide the hiring services will be encouraged.

The above strategies are to support production and productivity increase through the efforts of individual farmers. If effective services are provided coupled with sustained demand, farmers will grow for the market. As a safety net, ensuring minimum price support for their produces in the initial years will be very helpful.