MARGAO: State farmers, especially the ones who engage in crop rotation, have a reason to cheer. The water resource department (WRD) will soon be introducing a new scheme wherein wells will be constructed for the farmers in their paddy fields to make water available throughout for intensive cultivation.
“We will soon launch the scheme to construct wells for the benefit of local farmers through the WRD right in their paddy fields. I have a vision to improve agriculture through WRD assistance,” Minister for WRD Vinod Palyekar told this daily on Monday.
He said that a meeting with senior official of the department will be convened in a fortnight to discuss how best the WRD can successfully launch the scheme to provide water facility in order to encourage allied crops in the state.
Wells will be constructed by the WRD in the paddy fields of the farmers and provided to them to make right use of water for cultivation purpose. The wells will be Public Owned Private Use wells.
“The WRD will coordinate with the agriculture department to obtain the details of the cultivating farmers and farmers registered with Krishi cards and the land holdings.This will enable us to fasten the process. All this is aimed at encouraging intensive farming in Goa,” Town and Country Planning Minister Vijai Sardesai said on the sidelines of his visit to the aggrieved farmers of Nuvem and Verna. He said that Rs 50,000 will be spent on each well and added that the scheme will be first experimented in Fatorda constituency.
There are 28,500 registered farmers in Goa and nearly 10 per cent of them engage in double cropping. If a source of water is made available to the farmers, the percentage of doubling cropping will increase in Goa. Presently, there are a few wells personally constructed by the farmers in their cultivable lands.
Sources in the WRD, however, said that the department has a similar scheme of constructing a ring well of one cubic metre in size for the benefit of the locally registered farmers. However, these ring wells are not useful in the low-lying agricultural lands. “If the government is coming out with a new scheme of wells, it will surely benefit the farmers. But the scheme should include facilities to draw the water. It should make provision for small water pump of one horsepower,” said an engineer of WRD. He said that the farmers should make best use of the scheme.
An expert said that the scheme should be extended so as to create small ponds, as most of the paddy fields are located in low-lying areas where water is easily available.