Once upon a time Salcete taluka was known for agricultural activities. The fertile land used to yield a masive production of paddy. Cuncolim village, known for its twelve Bandharas, was famous for agricultural activities. Along with agriculture, subsidiary occupation of dairy farming was also a major activity some years back. The government, after spending crores of rupees, had brought the Selaulim water to villages laying pipelines and constructing canals. The Water Resources Department had even set up a separate command Area Development Agency to facilitate agricultural activities.
All this is history now. For over one decade and half, hundreds of hectares of agricultural and farm land have remained barren. The present generation of farmers is not ready to soil their hands by getting into agriculture and find no charm and profit in this field. Educated youth do not want to continue their hereditary and traditional family activities although they own hundreds of acres of agro land.
Farmers claim that there are many issues which need to be addressed to attract youth towards farming. Prakash Dessai, a young farmer, told Herald that his forefathers were in agriculture activities for ages but he quit it and has also decided not to tell his son to go in farming. He says farmers do not get good returns of their hard work, sometimes due to a bad season all efforts and hard work goes in vain leaving them not to take up the profession. Secondly, the present generation feels that there is no social status for farmers hence in Salcete, especially in Cuncolim, majority of farmers left the age old occupation.
Cuncolim is known for traditional irrigation facilities of Twelve Bandharas. People use to reap two crops in a year and besides this, there were horticulture activities like chilly cultivation, vegetable growth which were on forefront. There is plenty of water available in Cuncolim and surrounding areas, in fact there is wastage of lakhs of litres water coming downstream from Selaulim. There are Bandharas, wells and rivers but farmers do not want to go in farming activities. Everywhere one can now see huge agricultural land which remains without cultivation. Farmers also blame the stray cattle, who, they say, damage their crop and all their efforts go in vain.
Government is giving many facilities for farmers in the form of subsidized equipments for cultivation like tractors, harvester and even for weeding and planting machine is given on subsidised rates.
