Food habits cause a drop in jowar cultivation

  • | Wednesday | 12th December, 2018

The new generation doesn’t know how to bake jolad rotti (jowar bread).“Making jolada rotti is a laborious job. If you go by experts’ views and agriculture department data, this could well be the case.Due to continued drought and farmers eyeing commercial crops, cultivation of jowar (sorghum) is shrinking year by year. Hubballi: Is jowar, a staple food of North Karnataka, slowly disappearing from their diet? In the past 10 years, the cultivation has reduced to almost half. The tradition of jowar rotti for breakfast is also fading,” Dr Kulkarni said.Reduced yieldNingappa Kurbar, a farmer from Annigeri, said he had sown sorghum in 3 acres last year, but the yield was just 3 quintals which he kept for domestic use.

Hubballi: Is jowar, a staple food of North Karnataka, slowly disappearing from their diet? If you go by experts’ views and agriculture department data, this could well be the case.Due to continued drought and farmers eyeing commercial crops, cultivation of jowar (sorghum) is shrinking year by year. In the past 10 years, the cultivation has reduced to almost half. According to the agriculture department, in 2006-07, the crop was grown on 14.19 lakh hectares across the state, but in 2016-17, it was just 9.46 lakh hectares. In 2018-19, it further reduced to 7.5 lakh hectares.The major reasons for fall in cultivation area are incessant drought, labour intensive, low productivity and high input cost. Though the produce has a good price in the market, farmers get less after deducting all expenses.Experts attribute low consumption of jowar to the state government’s Anna Bhagya scheme. They say it has changed the food culture of the region.Expert’s takeAgricultural expert R V Patil Suresh Gowda said under the scheme, the government is distributing rice and people have started to use it extensively. The government should have reduced the quantity of rice and distributed more jowar under the Public Distribution System.He added that farmers have started using machines on their farms instead of cattle. They used to grow jowar at least to provide fodder for cattle. Now, farmers are growing jowar just for their consumption. It needs less water compared to other crops, but the problem is that farmers are not encouraged to grow it, he said.Dr Sanjeev Kulkarni, a gynaecologist-turned-farmer, said as irrigation is increasing, farmers are eyeing commercial crops such as sugarcane and pomegranate and therefore the area used for cultivating jowar is decreasing. Moreover, people are consuming more instant food. The new generation doesn’t know how to bake jolad rotti (jowar bread).“Making jolada rotti is a laborious job. The new generation finds it difficult to bake rottis and children prefer rice and chappati instead. Parents pack their wards’ lunch boxes with rice or chappati items. The tradition of jowar rotti for breakfast is also fading,” Dr Kulkarni said.Reduced yieldNingappa Kurbar, a farmer from Annigeri, said he had sown sorghum in 3 acres last year, but the yield was just 3 quintals which he kept for domestic use. "Usually, the yield used to be around 6-7 quintals per acre if it rained well, but for the past few years, I haven’t sold a single kilogram of jowar in the market," he said.

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