Mir Iqbal
PAMPORE, Oct 29: Minister for Agriculture, Ghulam Hassan Mir today admitted the drastic decrease in saffron production and attributed it to the delay in providing drip-irrigation – one of the components of National Saffron Mission (NSM)- to the farmers in the saffron belts of the State.
While replying to a question after the inauguration of the three-day Saffron Festival at Dusoo in Pampore, Mir said the department had dug 70 bore-wells for saffron growers under NSM, but none of the wells was made functional yet to provide irrigation facilities to the farmers. He said that the department would made 30 bore-wells functional in the month of November.
To provide Drip-irrigation to the farmers was one of the components of NSM and its pilot project was also started at Mundroo Pampore, while as main saffron Karewas including Dusoo, Lethpora and Chandhara were left without irrigation facilities.
Local growers also said that under this program some 1500 hectares of land was taken up for rejuvenation and bore wells had to be constructed on this land for better irrigation facilities.
“As the bore wells are yet to be constructed on major chunk of land there seems to be no future for the saffron growers. For this year only 200-300 hectares of land has been cultivated and as such the production too would come down for this year,” said, Ghulam Hassan, a local farmer.
Other saffron growers, who were invited to the festival said: “The failure of State Government to facilitate construction of bore-wells in saffron fields has spelt doom for the saffron growers and those who had earmarked 30-40 kanals of land for construction of bore-wells are in trouble with no solution in sight.”
They said the saffron growers have decided to adopt the traditional methods of cultivation of saffron corms if Government fails to implement scheme properly.
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