Provision of transport subsidy and initiating farmers’ cooperative, will lead to a shift from the current subsistence to commercial farming, according to the agriculture ministry. While it is expected to boost the sector’s growth rate from the current two percent, it might take at least three years for the transition towards commercial farming.
During the mid-year performance agreement review of the Ministry last week, Prime Minister, Tshering Tobgay said the 2 percent growth rate was not acceptable. “The growth rate is too low considering 64 percent of the Bhutanese population depends on agriculture.”
The marketing division of the agriculture ministry says the low growth rate is because of subsistence nature of farming in the country and limited arable land.
“There is a global market competition in terms of entering the exports market and in our context one of our challenges is with production,” said the Chief Marketing Officer of Marketing Development Division under agriculture ministry, Leki Tenzin.
He said they are not able to meet the volume that the importers or the buyers demand. “We are still at a very rudimentary stage of competing with grading and packaging.”
Leki Tenzin also said given Bhutan’s terrain and topography, they have difficulties with transportation. “It becomes costly and then our farming is also scattered and fragmented.”
There are plans in place to increase the growth rate. The ministry now has transport subsidy support to curb transportation issue and farmers’ cooperative movements have also been initiated.
“Once we upgrade our commercial farming status, then our growth rate can increase.” Leki Tenzin said Farmers groups and cooperatives are now spread across the country.
He said cooperative movement is the only solution to uplift marginal farmers and mitigate poverty.
“It becomes very difficult to push individual farmers to move toward commercial farming. It is only through collective and cooperative efforts that we are trying to increase the growth rate and push farmers from subsistence to commercial.”
There are 35 registered farmers’ cooperatives across the country. The marketing division of the ministry has also been exploring external markets for export.
Right now, India and Bangladesh are the only major markets for the country.
