By Nageshwar Patnaik in Bhubaneswar, September 17, 2016 : In a bid to resurrect the vital agriculture sector, Odisha government is trying to boost up irrigation facility to an additional 2.57 lakh hectares by the end of the current fiscal.

Chief minister Naveen Patnaik on Monday dedicated 1100 check dams here at a function saying that work is on to bring additional ten lakh hectares of land under irrigation by 2019. Although the irrigation potential has been increased by 13.25 lakh hectares from 36.06 lakh hectares in 2000-01 to 49.31 lakh hectares in 2013-14, with a mere 27% irrigation the state still lags behind the national average of 44.9% and one of the lowest ranking irrigated state.

Officials admit that the irrigation figure is limited to only Khariff season. The state, with almost 60 percent of land under rainfed agriculture and with water-dependant rice, as its main crop, the agriculture sector is particularly vulnerable to the vagaries of climate change.

The agro-climatic conditions are immensely suitable for cultivation of fruits like mango, lichee, guava and orange, the present gross cropped area under horticulture is 13.61 lakh hectares which is about 20% of net shown area.

On top of it, though agriculture and allied sub-sectors that contributed to more than 70 percent of the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) in the 1950 has declined to about 18% in 2015-16 due to relatively higher growth in non-agriculture sector.

The relative income of farmers is going down vis-à-vis other Sectors. Per-capita Agricultural GSDP stands at about one-third of per-capita GSDP. Besides, the average size of holdings is declining gradually. This has adversely affected the financial condition of the farmers.

“The farm sector in Odisha faces several challenges like low investment, low productivity, fluctuating growth, recurrence of natural calamities like drought, flood, cyclone, lack of adequate inputs like quality seeds, fertilizer, irrigation, availability of credit at affordable rates, effective insurance cover against crop loss and access to new technology for productivity gain, post-harvest needs like warehousing, storage and marketing facilities”, former member of National Farmers Commission, Jagdish Pradhan says.

Odisha initiated reforms in many sectors except agri-sector leaving it to languish like never before. “Agriculture is the back-bone of rural economy and livelihood of Odisha. It provides employment both directly and indirectly to about 64% of the total workforce. It is the largest private enterprise of the State as almost 2/3rd of the population of the State is dependent upon agriculture. But barring the governments headed by Nabakrushna Choudhry and Nandini Satpathy, no chief minister has taken any major reforms and bold initiative to boost up this primary sector”, Pradhan remarks.

The major challenge before Naveen Patnaik government is to meet the strong demand for food-grains as well as fruits, vegetables, milk, eggs, meat and fish which also form a substantial part of the food consumption basket and above all ensure long term food security. Stepping up farm productivity and investment in infrastructure through superior water management, soil nutrient management, quality seeds, pesticides management, development of dairy farming, livestock rearing and fisheries are some of the burning issues the state government needs to address sooner than later.