The Covid 19 pandemic and agriculture: Mitigation strategies followed by Punjab farmers

In order to prevent the spread of Covid 19, the Punjab government effected a state-wide lockdown thereby, the state agriculture was exposed to unprecedented challenges. In this backdrop, the present study carried out in Punjab revealed that the area under paddy crop increased (+1.03%) while it declined in case of cotton and sugarcane due to labour shortage. Fall in paddy area was observed in case of marginal, small and semi-medium farmers only and these categories resorted to the use of family labour for paddy transplanting to evade high local labour charges while the medium and large farmers opted for Direct Seeded rice (DSR).The human labourwages for paddy transplantation increased non uniformly across the villages from 23 per cent to as high as double the wages and this wage hike was more in the villages with lower wage rate during kharif 2019. The number of farm households in the village bore a negative relationship with the wage increase whereas there existeda positive trend with paddy area. The seed price rose by about 10 - 38 per cent for paddy; by about 5 - 18 per cent in cotton and no change urea and DAP prices was reported during the lockdown. Different mitigation strategies to tackle the covid challenge included coupon system for marketing of the rabi produce; employment of local unemployed labour and family; relaxation in Government norms related to sowing and transplanting paddy and adoption of improved technology like DSR.