PUDUCHERRY: While politicians and officials keep harping on the fact that the area under cultivation in Puducherry has been dwindling by the year, it seems no efforts were being made to arrest this trend. The latest administrative report by the agriculture department indicates that 9879 hectares of cultivable land was turning waste as farmers had not taken up cropping.According to the report, while the Net Area Sown (NAS) for 2009-2010 was 19,205 hectares, the amount of current and other fallows, usually defined as land on which cultivation had not taken place even once for a period of one to three years, was 5489 hectares.This apart, the extent of land classified as ‘Culturable Waste’, which officials said meant that cultivation on the land had not been done for more than five years, was 4390 hectares. Combined, the tally of both categories come to about 50 per cent of the NSA.Senior officials in the department said that the trend was “alarming” given the fact that the total cropped area in the UT had seen a consistent decline over the last five years. According to them, one of the reasons for farmers leaving the land fallow was the fact that there were norms that governed sale of agricultural lands and their conversion for other purposes.“The land has to remain idle for a particular number of years if it has to be converted to other purposes,” said one official and added that there was a trend of such wastelands being converted to real estate plots in the UT. Also, such a trend would have serious implications on food production, he said.
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