Contract farming

Sir,
Please refer to the article titled ‘‘‘Contract farming for rural prosperity’’  in  the DE dated 4th March, 2013.
There is no doubt that contract farming is a significant tool for mitigating marketing risks faced by the farmers by way of allocating risk between the company and its farmers. However, prior to introducing or starting “contract farming” in the State of Jammu and Kashmir and render it more popular among the peasants a few experiments are required to be resorted to in the farms of SKUAST, especially in those of Krishi Vigyan Kendras both under SKUAST, J and SKUAST , K. This is because, contract farming has failed in Punjab whence the ‘‘Green Revolution” in the late 1960s-early 1970s came to fore in the country. In Punjab, it was introduced in February 2003, as a follow up on the diversification plan. An idea behind contract farming was to shift area from rice-wheat cropping system to maize, basmati rice, pulses, oilseeds, vegetables, fruits etc. This however did not succeed due to one or the other reasons authors  of the write-up deserves appreciation for writting this article which is the need, especially  for the plains of Jammu and Valley of Kashmir, where rice and wheat, and rice and to some extent wheat, are grown extensively.
Yours etc….
Prof. (Dr) R D Gupta
258- C, Sainik Colony Jammu