Agriculture and my vision for Bhutan

Agriculture is the backbone of our nation till today and shall be forever. If we see the motive of every country today, each country is trying hard to succeed in technical field and many countries have achieved so much indeed. But in pretext of racing technically we have neglected the area of agriculture and someday we might have to fight for food, water and air if we don’t take extra care.

We must believe that the wealth of our nation should not be seen by our external debts and technical advancement but be seen by how sound we are agriculturally. This because at the end of the day what matters is how healthy you are physically and mentally.

But looking at the scenario today Bhutan has indeed neglected this area although Agricultural Ministry is trying to work in maintaining this yet have failed in certain areas. The beautiful and high yielding agricultural lands have been turned in towns (ex- Bajo) and mini-towns (Gyelpozhing), which I feel was not wise. On context of building these towns we have lost thousand acres of land which otherwise could have produced tons of grains and tons of vegetables. We can’t regret for the loss that we had but we should not succeed in making same mistakes again. 

                                     

                                       Photo- Bajo town which was once a beautiful agricultural land

Some ideas that I have  in enhancing our agricultural systems are,

a.     The first alternative to be agriculturally self-reliant is by identifying certain areas and converting them into large agricultural farms. Few areas where we find these huge fertile lands are like in Gelephu and Samtse where we can see 1000+ acres of land, which lies barren today, that can be converted in agricultural gardens that produces metric tones of rice and vegetables. Therefore government can take initiative and make them as agricultural farmland, which not just produces agricultural products but also will employ many hundreds of people.

b.    The second alternative is that we should set target for exporting agricultural items to foreign nation. One good example is “sangay samu”, which is capturing international market and indeed we should take advantage of such situation and promote many other agricultural products like, asparagrass, brochali, chillies, mushrooms, potatoes, tomatoes etc that would really fetch good income to our farmers. This can be done, if we really encourage young entrepreneurs to take responsibilities and work as the future is so promising. Many of these products can be canned and supplied to different parts of the world.

c.     The third way of promoting agriculture is that we should stop importing vegetables and pulses from neighboring country and target home production. We have enough agricultural land but yet we import all these products that clearly shows how inactive our genes are. It is not that we don't have resources but it’s all about having all resources but not utilizing in proper channels. Also there are many barren government lands which can be given to farmers on lease basis where they can grow agri-products and market it where we would be achieving a step closer towards self-reliant nation towards agriculture.

Therefore let us not wait for an auspicious day to start with but let us think each day is so auspicious and start working where we be the change to bring change in the society.