Photo Source: Babushahi Bureau
MLA Rana Gurjeet Singh encourages farmers to cultivate maize
Offers all support to farmers for adopting best agricultural practices and shifting to maize crop instead of paddy
Babushahi Bureau
Maur (Bathinda) February 23, 2025: Members of the Legislative Assembly, Punjab, Rana Gurjeet Singh today held discussions with farmers from the area motivating them to adopt best agricultural practices, leading to crop diversification and beginning maize cultivation, replacing the water-guzzling paddy.
Rana Gurjeet Singh offered all support to the farmers in growing maize, which includes from selecting high-yielding seeds to marketing support after the harvest.
During the interaction with farmers Rana Gurjeet Singh said diversification of crops in Punjab is being discussed and assured by the governments from time to time since 1985, however due to their utter failure the cotton crop in the area farmers have been pushed to an acute stress forcing them to shift to cultivation of paddy crop in the kharif season.
“The paddy crop has already done much anticipated damage as the water table in the area has been pushed excessively to lower levels and the threat of desertification is imminent,” said the Rana Gurjeet Singh who is MLA from Kapurthala, suggesting the farmers to grow maize instead of paddy. He addressed farmers near Maur chownk.
“Why wait for a doom to set in, let us change the course of cultivation to save ourselves and conserve our natural resources,” he appealed while addressing the farmers.
A few years ago cotton was grown over 8 lakh hectares (20 lakh acres approx.), the area under the crop now has shrunk to just 98,000 hectares (2.4 lakh acres), a cause of plausible worry, he said.
Offering support to the farmers in growing maize, the MLA said: “I would provide the entire support and eco-system to the farmers for growing the maize crop, from supplying seeds, guiding on best practices for best yield, will make sure crop is procured at a best price”.
He told the farmers that he lift beetroot cultivated by the farmers over 15,000 acres to produce sugar and give farmers the best price.
He told the farmers that he has got maize trials conducted in Fazilka area, even though sowing of crop was delayed, it offered very encouraging results and farmers earned better profits than any other crop.
A large number of farmers from the area turned up for the interactive session with the MLA. Failure of cotton crop in the area has led to a colossal damage as the ginning and spinning industry which used to flourish in the cotton belt have suffered heavy losses.
“Out of 440 cotton ginning mills 400 have faced forced closured owing to the crop failure,” said the Rana Gurjeet Singh, and showing a hope, he added that the area would see a turnaround once farmers adopts maize crop as farmers will earn Rs. 65,000 per acre from maize, suggesting them to adopt the crop cycle of moong, maize and wheat to get best remunerative earning from agriculture.
By cultivating maize farmers will become partners in industrialization in Punjab as the crop will feed ethanol, starch and cattle feed industry.
Speaking about the role of the government, he suggested that Punjab government should offer a support of Rs. 10,000 per acre for maize cultivation which it is already pumping by giving free power to agriculture tube wells to pump out water to feed paddy crop and similarly the Government of India should giving matching support of Rs. 15,000 to bring crop diversification.
Rana Gurjeet Singh and farmers paid obeisance at Takht Shri Damdama Sahib and prayed for better times for Punjab and its agriculture. He also met the residents of Maur and ginning mills owners to discussed problems faced by them due to fall in area under cotton.