IT is encouraging to see the Chief Minister, Mr Digambar Kamat giving top priority to agriculture in his budget speech and enhancing the budgetary outlay to Rs 46.22 crore for this year from Rs 18.62 crore of the previous financial year, a net increase of 148 per cent.

But making available finance is not sufficient nor a guarantee that agricultural production will increase and succeed in attracting the youth towards the primary sector of the economy. Maybe it would help the government to avail the benefit under the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, but the major challenge staring the government in the face is how to reactivate the declining agriculture and also turn it into a profit-making sector. Immediately after Liberation, the state had an area of 3,26,672 Ha, under agriculture. But by 2009 it has come down to around 1,40,000 Ha. Agricultural production has drastically reduced. It is really sad that Goa has around 0.60 lakh Ha land as uncultivated. Even the Economic Survey 2009-10, released during the current budget session points to a sustain decline in paddy production; while it was 2.20 lakh tones in 2005-06 it declined to 1.77 lakh tonne in 2008-09. Not only paddy but even the sugarcane, pulses and cashew production have declined considerably during these years: Sugarcane from 5.58 lakh tonne to 4.92; cashew from 2.70 lakh tonne to 1.31 lakh tonne and pulses from 1.15 lakh tonne to 1.01 lakh tonne.

Simply pumping money into agriculture will not benefit farmers. The money must not go waste or into hands of the corrupt. The continuous decline in agriculture production has also affected the state GDP. Usually, a government carries out periodical crop surveys to assess the agricultural lands, actual utility of land and to identify the crops, the type of crops cultivated by them, the amount of crops, the size of dry land, wet land and cultivable fallow land in the state. It was in 1986 that the state government had carried out such a survey to have the ground-level statistics relating to the primary sector. Besides how could Goa government ignore the fact that it is imperative to have a well- defined land-use policy for augmenting agriculture? It is unfortunate that agriculture lands have become victims to the lust of realtors. The government has to stop conversion of agriculture land for commercial purpose. It is painful to watch that a handful of people and politicians for their personal gains have been using the agriculture land for urbanisation. The speech of the Chief Minister provided the indication that he was too keen to use the subsidy as the remedial measure. But it is a misconstrued concept. The element of subsidy is effective only in the case where the farmers are really taking to farming activities. In Goa, the number of people involved in agriculture has come down from 64 to 16 per cent. Though Goa has less amount of land, what is needed is the government should use the available land in a more effective manner for promoting agriculture. The government ought not to forget that loss of agriculture has been the gain for urbanisation and also alienation of youth from Goan life. This needs to be reversed by making agriculture attractive as an industry.