First of all everybody knows and agrees that the most of the farmers in India are poor. Now let us try to find out the reasons.
1. Lack of Investment capacity:
As we all know, the farmers are really worried about earning their daily livelihood. Most of them are worried about how they can get or earn sufficient food for today itself to fill the needs of themselves and their family members.
On the other hand, the horticultural land needs lot of expenses for development of land, fencing the land properly, for arrangement of water, and even the Road for transportation, etc. etc. Now, the person who is not able to earn even sufficient to fufill his or his family’s daily needs, how he can arrange or afford to invest this much amount for development of the land. Instead he will seek for other options, like to grow general crops as these attract very less investment, like rice, wheat, bajra, etc. and at least get assured about filling the stomach of all family members.
Now, just for comparision, as we had already seen, we can generate the income of about Rs 6000 per year (AS on today), from the plant of Alphanso mango tree, whereas from the same area the maximum rice can be produced will be about of Rs 1000.00. Thus how then the farmer can even think of going for horticultural plantation ?
2. Lack of sustaining capacity:
The most important fact is that, for any horticultural plantation, you have to wait for around 5-7 years, to get any yield. Now if you plant the horticulture, for the period of say minimum 5 years, you will get nothing from that land. Instead you have to spend on monitoring, fertilizer, irrigation, etc. Now the person who is worried about his daily needs, how comes that he will plant horticulture and will sustain for more than five years without any income. It is practically impossible, so 99% of the farmers cannot even think to go for horticultural plantation.
3. Lack of knowledge:
Unfortunately in India, most of the farmers are still illiterate. SO they are absolutely unaware about the productivity, advantages and other factors about different types of crops, or horticulture. They just continue to work in the same way their forefathers were working. And because of lack of education, they are also very against to adopt or learn new technique, or to try something new. So, it becomes very difficult also to convince them about new varities, new techniques, horticultural plantation benefits, etc.
4. Losses due to Natural calamities, and inability to sustain in such case:
The main threat for any farmer, whether he is agriculturist or horticulturist or floriculturist, is nature. The natural calamities like storm, flood and fire are main enemies of farmer. Fortunately, in Konkan, the history of storm, which can really make harm to horticulture, is not that bad. The very destructive storm hits Konkan hardly once or twice in a decade. SO for Konkan area, this is not we should think much about. Then also the regions which are on hilly terrain, the flood cannot be a threat, as the water drains automatically because of the terrain itself.
But fire, unfortunately is the very harmful and destructive threat for the region of Konkan. As you all know the rainfall in Konkan is very huge, and hence a large amount of grass grows and covers almost all the empty part of the land. This grass dries in early summer, and if unfortunately, which happens most of the times, something lightens even one grass, it starts burining and in a very short time it covers the area of kilometer and kilometers with fire. This burns out completely whatever exists on that area. This is called as “Vanva” in Marathi. I had seen even at Wadikond and nearby huge trees which were more than 10 – 15 years old and were very productive, had converted into the ash. This not only takes away the produce for that year, but then you have to replant the tree, and once again wait for another 5-7 years without any income, to start the earning of today.
Yes definitely provision can be made to avoid this loss, or at least minimize this loss. If you want to see, please do visit Wadikond, where you can observe it with your own eyes.
And these are the reasons, beside that the investment in horticultural plantation is far better, still the farmers are poor.
Hope you agree this. If not please do inform me with your concerns, queries in detail. You can mail me at sarang@wadikond.com