PANAJI
The farming community of Goa who have kept their land fallow for over three years could be in for a shock very soon.The government will be well within the laws of Goa Daman and Diu agricultural Tenancy Act which empowers it to take over cultivation of agricultural land which has been kept fallow for over three years.
The government of Goa has now initiated a survey of fallow lands in all talukas of Goa, except Quepem and Sattari, which will be conducted by the National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning, Nagpur. Field staff of the survey institute will fan out across the State to prepare an inventory of all agricultural land in the State and verify whether lands are being cultivated or not to prepare a land use plan in the State.
The survey is expected to be completed before March 31, this year.
The survey was promised by the then Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar in 2013, who said that the State needed a record of all the lands being kept fallow.
He had warned that there is a provision in the Tenancy Act to take back the land that is not cultivated for over three years. And that the tenancy act needs to be amended to make way for contract farming as people are apprehensive to give land on contract lest they might lose ownership right. The government had announced the survey in response to demands from several legislators that contract farming be allowed in the state instead of allowing the lands to be fallow.
With agriculture no longer being a profitable business and unable to compete with tourism and mining industries in terms of returns, farmers have been moving away from agriculture exposing the agricultural lands to be used for other purposes.
Earlier, the department had selected the Nagpur-based National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning over another Bengaluru-based agency to develop land use planning and classification of fallow land by using satellite imagery.
“The survey will be comprehensive. It will give a complete picture of the amount of land is fallow, the status of present land use and crops and the potential cropping pattern for the future, etc,” an official from agriculture department had said.
The agriculture department has been heavily criticized by farmers and agricultural experts, as the statistics of crop areas and production during the past few decades appeared to be outdated.
(Inputs from Goan Varta)
