26.3 quintals an acre or 6.5 tonnes per hectare. That’s what Bahadur Singh Jaria has harvested from 10 out of his 30 acres land planted to wheat in the recent 2017-18 rabi season. It is being described as the first time a farmer in Punjab — possibly India as well — has broken the 6.5 tonnes/hectare yield barrier in wheat; the previous highest was 6.456 tonnes recorded by a Sangrur farmer in 2013-14.
Jaria attributes his record-breaking yield to HD-2967, a blockbuster wheat variety bred by the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) and released for commercial cultivation in 2011-12.
Jaria does not subscribe to the view of agriculture being a losing proposition. “Yes, the profit margins may be less nowadays, but the farmer should learn to go in for precision agriculture and cut down a lot of unnecessary expenditures. I believe that the production cost can be kept within Rs 7,000 per acre for wheat and Rs 11,000 for paddy. At 25 quintals and 30-32 quintals per acre yields, and the current MSPs of Rs 1,735/quintal for wheat and Rs 1,590/quintal for paddy, you can do the math yourself,” he says. Now, that is a really optimistic 30-year-old farmer.
Read more of this in a report by Anju Agnihotri Chaba published in The Indian Express....
