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Uttarakhand Govt. proposes SAZs for food security, employment

Dehra Dun: With an aim to protect farmland and achieve food security in the State, the Uttarakhand Government has drafted a policy, which will focus on the development of Special Agriculture Zones (SAZs).

“SAZs are just like micro and small enterprises through which we are trying to protect our agriculture land and bring food security,” said an official. Under the programme, the Government proposes setting up of self-employment units (SEUs) like fisheries, tea gardens, dairy farming and various other agriculture and horticulture activities.

The government has already started identifying areas in this regard. Special sops under the new Hill Development Policy 2008 could also be extended for SAZs.

The draft agri-policy, which may be announced after the elections, clearly states that there should be no industrialisation on agriculture land in the State.

Uttarakhand Agriculture Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat has proposed that farmland should not be used for industrialisation and instead non-agriculture and non-cultivated agriculture land should be utilised for the purpose. Nearly 3.12 lakh hectare of non-agriculture and 3.83 lakh hectare of non-cultivated agriculture land is available in the hill State.

Last year, a committee comprising agriculture scientists mainly from G.B. Pant Agriculture University had finalised the new agri-draft, which suggested that there should be no industrialisation and development of SEZ projects on farm land as a large chunk had already fallen in the hands of builders and industrialists in the state over the past few years.

The centre has permitted nearly 273 new SEZ projects on the agriculture land, something which in turn can erode about 1.7 crore hectare of farmland in the country, according to a state government estimate. In Uttarakhand, nearly 24,000 hectare of agriculture land has been decimated by urbanisation and industrial programmes in the past 10-13 years.

The committee also suggested that the government should now develop SAZs to protect the fertile land. “We want to protect our agriculture land for which we want to bring SAZ in Uttarakhand,” said Mr. Rawat.

He, however, clarified that the idea of SAZ was not being mooted to replace the much-contentious Special Economic Zones (SEZs), an issue that has created problems in States like Goa, West Bengal and Orissa. -- PTI

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