Punjab Farmers Show Less Interest in Expanding Maize Area

12-Aug-2025 08:34 PM

Bhatinda. Although the Punjab government has started a pilot project to promote maize cultivation with the aim of accelerating crop diversification and increasing its use as biofuel, the farmers of the state are showing very little interest in it.

The state government has started a comprehensive effort to increase the sowing area and production of maize in the Kharif season as an industrial crop through a subsidy scheme, but it has not got the expected success.

The Punjab government had set a target of sowing maize in a total area of 12 thousand hectares (30 thousand acres) in six districts of the state, but only 59 percent of this target could be achieved.

The six districts in which farmers were encouraged to cultivate maize instead of paddy include Bathinda, Sangrur, Pathankot, Gurdaspur, Jalandhar and Kapurthala.

Under the subsidy scheme in the pilot project, it has been provided that farmers who give up paddy cultivation and sow maize will be given financial incentives at the rate of Rs 17,500 per hectare.

The government wants Punjab farmers to try to reduce paddy acreage so that water consumption can be reduced.

The recommended date for sowing maize ended on July 15 and the state agriculture department is now going to start a campaign of physical verification by visiting the fields so that it can be ascertained that those farmers who have claimed to cultivate maize instead of paddy can be given subsidy at the rate of Rs 7000 per acre.

According to the initial data of the agriculture department, this time maize has been sown in 7000 hectares or about 19,500 acres of area in the state.

Under this, maize acreage was recorded as 4100 acres in Pathankot, 3700 acres in Sangrur, 3200 acres in Bathinda, 3100 acres in Jalandhar, 2800 acres in Kapurthala and 2600 acres in Gurdaspur.