Commercial gains emanating from the horticulture industry have encouraged the farmers in Kashmir to convert vast tracts of agricultural land into orchards thus saying goodbye to their centuries old traditional occupation and switching over to new business.
This appetite for fast and easy money has led to drastic decline in agricultural land otherwise meant for paddy cultivation. Over the last two decades a huge area of agricultural land has been converted into horticultural land as farmers seek to earn more revenue against horticultural products.
Since horticulture brings six times greater economy than agriculture, more and more people tend to change the land patterns. According to an economic survey, the agricultural land in Kashmir has shrunk by two lakh hectares since 1996.
The farmers attribute the process of land shift to the climatic changes and failure on part of the government to provide facilities to improve the agricultural production. In Kashmir the agriculture products are produced using ancient techniques. We are still dependent on nature to produce the crop; there is no innovation in the field.
At present Kashmir is deficient in its food items and if people continue to bring more and more agricultural land into horticulture, Kashmir will be more food deficient in the near future. Experts believe that if the land conversion continues to be at the present pace, by the end of this century, we will have to import eighty percent of food from outside J&K. The government must ensure that conversion of agricultural land is minimized to a justified level.
