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Manipur’s Paddy field success story
The family of Ahanthem Premjit,a farmer who lives in Sawombung Ahantherm Leikai village in Manipur’s Imphal east district usually gets around Rs 14000/Rs 15000 annually from paddy planted in his cultivable land covering 3000 sq m.
With the introduction of paddy-fish farming system in his field,he now gets an additional income of Rs 15000 from fish without any additional expenditure for fish farming apart from the cost of fish seed.
“This is a very useful farming system in our region as we all eat fish round the year” Premjit,a father of four children told Eastern Panorama here.
With a similar hope, farmers have started to adopt the new farming system in their respective paddy fields following ICAR’s demonstration programs, Pronob Das,Subject matter specialist(Fisheries) said.
“Paddy is an essential crop but not a profitable crop,if our farmers want to improve their earning, they can take up this farming system” he said,”with a little effort and modification, they can earn double their annual income.” Common carp variety is the best suitable fish in Manipur.
“I wish that with other like minded farmers like Premjit taking up such farming technology with a little extra effort in this region, Manipur can produce enough fish for the state’s consumption and export purposes” Pronob said.
The fish farmers of the state produce 17000/18000 MT of fish every year against the state’s annual fish requirement of 25000 MT. With the demand of fish on the rise every year due to population explosion, the state has been importing the required fish quantity from other parts of the country with a huge expenditure every now and then.
“We can stop this,if we could take up this new farming system in the region” Dr B K Behera,fish scientist of ICAR for NEH region said, “We havealso identified 40,000 hectares of water bodies,suitable for paddy cum fish farming out of the state’s 1.5 lakh hectares of cultivable land”. But the state is presently hardly utilizing 4000 to 5000 hectares of such wetlands.
If the farmers have interest in this, they could produce not less than 50,000 MT fish every year without any additional expenditure and some modification in their annual work routine,the scientist said. “Besides if they took up the new farming in a right direction, it can really help in building an economically sound and developed region” he said.
Manipur is the most suitable site for paddy-fish farming among all the north east states as the region has 79,360 hectares of water body suitable for paddy-fish farming out of it’s total area of 3.39 million hectares of cultivable land. However there are also success stories of Apatani system of farming in Arunachal Pradesh.
In India,20 million hectares out of 42 million hectares of land under paddy cultivation is suitable for paddy-fish farming,but only about 0.23 million hectares is actually used.
“This is a very useful farming system in our region as we all eat fish round the year” Premjit,a father of four children told Eastern Panorama here.
With a similar hope, farmers have started to adopt the new farming system in their respective paddy fields following ICAR’s demonstration programs, Pronob Das,Subject matter specialist(Fisheries) said. “Paddy is an essential crop but not a profitable crop,if our farmers want to improve their earning, they can take up this farming system” he said,”with a little effort and modification, they can earn double their annual income.” Common carp variety is the best suitable fish in Manipur.
“I wish that with other like minded farmers like Premjit taking up such farming technology with a little extra effort in this region, Manipur can produce enough fish for the state’s consumption and export purposes” Pronob said.
The fish farmers of the state produce 17000/18000 MT of fish every year against the state’s annual fish requirement of 25000 MT. With the demand of fish on the rise every year due to population explosion, the state has been importing the required fish quantity from other parts of the country with a huge expenditure every now and then.
“We can stop this,if we could take up this new farming system in the region” Dr B K Behera,fish scientist of ICAR for NEH region said, “We havealso identified 40,000 hectares of water bodies,suitable for paddy cum fish farming out of the state’s 1.5 lakh hectares of cultivable land”. But the state is presently hardly utilizing 4000 to 5000 hectares of such wetlands.
If the farmers have interest in this, they could produce not less than 50,000 MT fish every year without any additional expenditure and some modification in their annual work routine,the scientist said. “Besides if they took up the new farming in a right direction, it can really help in building an economically sound and developed region” he said.
Manipur is the most suitable site for paddy-fish farming among all the north east states as the region has 79,360 hectares of water body suitable for paddy-fish farming out of it’s total area of 3.39 million hectares of cultivable land. However there are also success stories of Apatani system of farming in Arunachal Pradesh.
In India,20 million hectares out of 42 million hectares of land under paddy cultivation is suitable for paddy-fish farming,but only about 0.23 million hectares is actually used.
