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Agriculture Profile |
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Though Trongsa Dzongkhag covers an area about 1807.29 sq km, about 4596.48Acres (1869.63 wet land & 3726.85 dry land) of land are arable excluding orchards experiencing warm humid climate the soil type found is sandy loamy and clay loamy. The Agriculture is the main employment source and source of income for majority of the population. The main crops grown by the farmers are Paddy, Maize, Buck wheat, wheat, Mandarin, temperate fruit crops like pear, plum peach etc, Potato, chilli and other vegetable crops. The annual cereal crops production is around 3903MT which are mainly retained for home consumption to meet the year round cereal demand of the family and only small volume of the Horticulture produce like vegetables are marketed at local market while cash crop like mandarin are sold on large volume.
Sources: Agriculture Statics, 2007
The Dzongkhag Agriculture Sector emphasis agriculture development through triple gem strategy of Production, accessibility and Marketing and recent upcoming OGTP (One Geog Three Product) plan of MoA could upscale/ orient farming practices to semi commercial and commercial level where it would solve the problem of rural urban migration, food shortage and generate income earning source to enhance livelihood of the farmers in pursuit of Gross National Happiness.
Apart from providing extension advices to rural population, supply of improved seed and seeding, farmers training, land management, irrigation channel construction, farm road construction etc are some of the targeted activities to improve agriculture production.
The Seven agriculture staff of the Agriculture Sector renders services to farmers of Trongsa Dzongkhag.
Problems and constraint
Enhancing food security for both at national and household level, enhancing rural livelihood and promoting sustainable utilization of agriculture land are some of the scared responsibility of Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, relevant particularly to the Department of Agriculture thereof to the Dzongkhag Agriculture sector. Despite impressive progress achieved after the planned year since 1961, Trongsa Dzongkhag still faces challenges on issues: Poor rural accessibility, small and fragmented land holding, crop destruction by vertebrate pest and food Insecurity.
Rural Accessibility
Owing to rugged terrain nature and with about 82 km length farm road, the accessibility in the Dzongkhag is Poor and service delivery becomes expensive. Mostly Geog centers are connected by roads and far flung rural villages are yet to be connected which is very essential to link farm produce to markets. Without farm roads rural population are deprived of easy access to inputs and other facilities.
Crop Destruction by Vertebrate Pest
Increased Crop production as also limited by increasing crop demand caused by vertebrate pest like boar, deer, monkey, birds are main wild animal destroying the crops and bringing down both crop production and productivity level.
Small and fragmented land Holding
The Dzongkhag is confronted with the problem of small and fragmented land holdings. Many farmers don’t own land and depend on share cropping. Hence any effort towards cash crop and commercial farming are confronted with the problems associated with the pattern of Land holding.
Food Insecurity
Though annual cereal production in the Dzongkhag is about 3903Mt, still farming population face food shortage during intensive agriculture operation period. To increase the production to match production shortage is again limited by factors like small land holdings, natural disaster like flash flood, labour shortage and crop damage by other animals, pests and diseases.
Recommendation
1. Accessibility Development
Effort towards construction of quality farm road will be way forward for sustainable connectivity between production and market which will upscale the present subsistence farming system to semi commercial or commercial level and boost agriculture production in near future. The farm road connectivity to rural population will access them to use improved agriculture input supply and avail other facility.
2. Storage facility
In the absence of proper storage facility, substantial quantity of food grains and perishable food crops are lost after harvest resulting lower agriculture produce during lean production period. To address such problem introduction of storage facility both at commercial and house hold would help in storing agriculture produce and divert or market goods to other places/ Market.
3. Pest and Diseases Management
The occurrence of diseases and pest is another limiting factor to increase agriculture production. The limited knowledge of extension on diseases and pest and lack of subject specialization by extension on plant protection limits complete and concrete recommendation to solve the problem. Though at national level plant protection service is rendered by National Plant Protection Center however, a service of plant protection specialist region wise is recommended.
4. Improved /quality Agriculture Inputs
Since the pattern of land holdings is small and fragmented, to derive high agriculture production, increasing productivity is the answer only which would be solved by making practice use of improved agriculture inputs and crop management practices.
5. Farmers Group formation/ Co-operatives
In many developing nation farmers group has been effective organizational means for mobilizing collective self help actions aimed at improving the socio-economic circumstances of their member and communities. Farmer’s group formation and eventually development to cooperative is seen as a means to enable small scale producer to reap benefits of economics of scales through reduced input costs, improved marketing mechanism and expanding bargaining power.
Few farmers group on crop production is already in practice where impressive outputs were resulted. Therefore, Promotion of group formation is recommended which will serve as foundation for RNR enterprise development in the Dzongkhag
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