2023-24 saffron production 18MT, Parliament told it was 2.6 MT
Fayaz Bukhari
SRINAGAR, Nov 28: The Jammu and Kashmir Government has provided misleading information to the Parliament regarding saffron production in Kashmir showing 67.5 percent decline since 2010-11 while actually it had increased by over 80 percent during the same period.
As per the information provided to the Parliament in response to a question of then Member Parliament Justice (rtd) Hasnain Masoodi, the Office of Financial Commissioner (Revenue), UT of Jammu and Kashmir, had told Parliament that the production of saffron in J&K had decreased from 8.0 MT in 2010-11 to 2.6 MT in 2023-24, resulting in an overall decline in production by about 67.5 percent over the period.
However, as per the Agriculture Department data, the production during the same period had increased to 18.087 MT in 2023-2024 showing an increase of 80 percent since 2010-11. The misleading information was provided in the year when there was bumper crop saffron in Kashmir.
An official of the Revenue Department told Excelsior that the data collection method of the department was not scientific which led to the error. “Our data was based on single-stage Crop Cut Experiments (CCEs) while the scientific method devised by the Research and Development level of SKUAST-K is multi-stage CCEs,” he said.
He said that last year the Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of India constituted a team of officers headed by Joint Secretary, Horticulture-INM, Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of India, New-Delhi who visited J&K to validate the productivity estimates of saffron by co-witnessing Crop Cutting Experiments during October 25 to 28, 2023.
The visiting team along with Agriculture and Revenue Department teams undertook data collection and the team reached at the conclusion that there was a huge deviation from the result undertaken by the Revenue Department.
The team analyzed the CCE report of the Revenue Department and found that the report on the saffron production was based on the single-stage CCE schedule while ignoring the scientific crop cut experiments module devised by SKUAST-Kashmir.
The Agriculture Department (Vide communication No. Agri/Dev-214/2023-24/5519-23, dated 01.02.2024) requested the Revenue Department to adopt the scientific multi-cut crop cut experiments module for estimation of yields of saffron crop.
The Director, Planning Financial Commissioner (Revenue) (No. FC/P&S/OS/ Kharif (2023)/482, dated 14.05.2024) acknowledged and also considered the observations made by the Agriculture Department regarding the estimation of yield of saffron on multi-stage CCE and has ensured that the same methodology would be adopted by them in future.
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