On May 06th, 2020 the state government of Haryana inaugurated the “Mera Pani, Meri Virasat” project. Here Haryana’s eight major agriculture blocks Ismailabad, Sewan, Guhla, Shahabad, Pipli, Ratia, Babain and Sirsa were banned to cultivate any kind of water stressed crop in any new field.
The state came up with this initiative in order to conserve water and also to help its state farmers to be familiar with heterogeneousness of crop palnting. It mainly focuses on switching from paddy (the most water using crop) to crops, like pulses, maize and all those vegetables which requires comparatively lower amount of water.
The scheme would help the farmers of the eight blocks with a financial support of Rs. 7,000 per acre for branching out into other crop cultivation. It plans to cover almost 50% of the total cost for every farmer registrations for diversification, and an 85% of total cost for drip irrigation system installation would also be covered.
Farmer’s would need to register in to the official site and submit essential revenue details regarding the land suggested for diversification.
Various demonstrations would be given to the farmers regarding this change crop cultivation or diversification so that the farmers could understand the basic concepts & learn the effective way to not just grow other crops but also to start Good Agriculture Practice. This would help them for getting a better and higher yield of crops at the end of harvesting.
Farmer’s of other parts of Haryana can also take advantage of the scheme if ready to substitute paddy.
The state wants more of maize and hence would guarantee the availability of planters for maize or multicrop etc. In order to popularize the concept of diversification some maize-dryers would be installed at various markets for reducing the moisture content inside the maize grains as a part of this campaign.
As it would only cover 50% of the total cost for the whole crop changing, a huge question mark arises on the full success of the schemes execution. The initiative should make the diversification scheme amount from Rs. 7,000 to Rs.25,000 per acre ,as it would make the event successful and then the same could be suggested to other states for water management crop farming.
