PANAJI: The department of agriculture has completed soil testing of 3,000 samples, out of the targeted 20,000 such samples, taken from the fields around the state, and would soon provide related reports to the respective owner/ tenant of these fields, on a special agricultural mobile app.
Coming out with this information, the director of agriculture, Ulhas Pai Kakode told ‘The Navhind Times’ that the soil is being analysed at the soil testing laboratories located at Ela, Old Goa and Margao.
“The owners/ tenants of the respective fields would also be provided with soil-test based fertiliser recommendations, through the zonal agricultural officer,” he added.
The exercise is undertaken to keep a check on the fertility of the soil, and any farmer who is interested to get his soil sample tested, is eligible for the same. The soil samples from the farmer’s land are collected by the department of agriculture and analysed free of cost, and recommendation of fertilizer doses are given to increase the yield.
Speaking further, Kakode informed that the agriculture department, for the first time, has introduced to the local farmers, a rice transplanter – for mechanised transplanting of rice seedlings onto paddy field – and direct paddy seeder, used for sowing of germinated paddy seeds directly into the wetland fields.
“The agricultural department doesn’t supply agricultural machinery and therefore, a NGO brought the rice transplanter, which was used by us on pilot basis in fields collectively admeasuring about 40 acres, in North and South Goa,” the director of agriculture informed, stating that the rice transplanter plants rice seedlings in one acre of land, per hour. “We used the rice transplanter during the Rabi or Vaingan season and will now use it during the Kharif or Sorod season, covering 100 acres to 150 acres of fields, on pilot basis, before recommending it to the farmers,” he maintained, adding that it would be apt for the farmers’ clubs or farmers’ co-operative societies to buy the machine.
Kakode also said that the direct paddy seeder, brought through the company, has been used in some fields in Goa, and the related reports are good.
It was also informed that all the agricultural schemes, which were available for monsoon crops last year, exists this year too, including 50 per cent subsidies for initial ploughing as well as on paddy seeds.
The director of agriculture further informed that maximum amount of paddy was cultivated in Goa, during the year 2013-14, which was 4 tonne 400 grams per hectare . “It has remained more or less steady after that, with the variation of only 100 grams per hectare to 200 grams per hectare, on either side,” Kakode noted, maintaining that the total paddy cultivation in the state, per year is decided by way of eye-estimate carried out by the zonal agricultural officers.
“Until 1979-80, the talathis of the Goan villages used to note down the land taken up for paddy cultivation by the farmers, in their respective villages, as well as the paddy cultivated,” he stated, pointing out that the practice – primary reporting system – is no more followed.
Kakode also informed that the department of agriculture annually picks up random fields in each taluka, for paddy cultivation, and the amount of paddy cultivated in these fields is used as a baseline for deciding on the amount of paddy cultivated in the state, during the particular year, in tandem with the eye-estimate of the ZAOs.
