Chandigarh, Nov 15: The Punjab government has set a target of covering 2.5 lakh acre agriculture land under the zero-tillage technique to minimise cost of production of wheat as also to save irrigation water and labour cost. An official spokesman said here yesterday one lakh acre land was covered under the zero-tillage technique during 2002-03 compared to just 6,000 acres in the previous year and farmers gained Rs eight crore as a profit.
He said to provide technical training to farmers, the state agriculture department had organised 34 district level, 276 block level and 2,760 village level kissan training camps during 2002-03.
He said to overcome the problem of plenty, Punjab became the first state in the country to start crop diversification and contract farming scheme in the state. Under this scheme 840 acre land was covered under barley and 9,798 acre under gobi sarson during 2002-03.
He said 26,420 acre area had been covered under corn, 94,430 acre under basmati, 387 acre under caster (arind) and 5,072 acre gawara crop during this year so far.
Bureau Report