GOAN farmers still nurse the impression that the government would do some thing to stop usurping of the agriculture land for urbanisation and initiate effective steps to protect their precious land.

Though the Chief Minister, Mr Digambar Kamat has given top priority to agriculture in his budget speech and also enhanced 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, the impact is yet to be felt at the ground level. A report from Margao underlines that farmers desperately look for government intervention. But the ground realities speak otherwise. If the picture portrayed by the Economic Survey 2009-10 is an indicator then it can safely be said agriculture has no future in Goa. The section on ‘Agriculture and Allied Activities’ opens with a distressful sentence, “Goa is passing through a difficult phase in agriculture.” The opening observation does not instill much confidence: total agricultural production has remained static; agricultural productivity (i.e. kg/per hectare yield) has remained static; the size of the total cropped area is diminishing; the scope for expansion of agriculture is limited; the sector faces acute local labour shortage; the younger generations of farmers are not interested in agriculture; hired labour from among migrants cost so much that farming is becoming unviable. If at all the agriculture has to be saved and revived the government should work out a comprehensive action plan. Subsidy for mechanisation is certainly not the alternate to human labour. It must ensure that no more land is taken away for construction purposes. It has to motivate the farmers to take to agriculture. The government has to realise that 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. 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. The fact cannot be ignored that continuous decline in agriculture production has also affected the state GDP. The government should carry out crop survey to assess the agricultural lands, actual utility of land and to identify the crops.