Bhubaneswar, July 16: The irony was hard to miss as Orissa, a state buffeted year after year by natural calamities, today received the highest agriculture productivity award for 2010-11 from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi.

Former agriculture minister Damodar Rout, who was primarily responsible for the rise in foodgrain production during the period, claimed that the state deserved the honour as the per hectare productivity had gone up to around 32 quintals from 18 to 21 quintals in the past. He said in certain areas of Cuttack and Jagatsinghpur, it had soared to the level of 35 quintals per hectare.

However, the paradox of rising production despite recurrent natural calamities such as droughts, floods and cyclones, remains. In December last year, unseasonal rain, triggered by a low-pressure system in the Bay of Bengal, caused widespread damage to crops in 23 out of the state’s 30 districts. The loss was estimated to be 50 per cent or more in seven of the worst affected districts.

Claiming more than 50 per cent crop loss in 12 lakh hectares of cultivable land, chief minister Naveen Patnaik had met the Prime Minister and Union agriculture minister Sharad Paward and sought relaxation in FAQ (fair averaged quality) norm for paddy, as the quality of grain had been affected due to rain. Later, the state government announced a relief package of Rs 900 crore for the affected farmers even as some of the ruling party leaders indulged in their favourite pastime of Centre-bashing for the UPA government’s alleged indifference towards the state in these matters.

However, all said and done the state still managed to produce more than 87 lakh metric tonnes of foodgrains last year. In fact, the state’s overall yield has been consistently good for the past four to five years despite the nature factor.

Sources said production in the state leaped from 55 lakh MT in 2000 to 92 lakh MT in 2007-08. Though it came down slightly the next year when it was pegged at 86 lakh MT, the production in 2009-10 was more than that. Even the per hectare yield has been rising.

Rout attributed the rise in production to many factors, including timely disbursement of agricultural credit and other inputs such as, seeds and fertilisers, to the farmers. “The state set a record of sorts by distributing 5.35 lakh quintals seeds to the farmers in 2010-11, a marked improvement over the supply in the two previous years,” said Rout, adding that the government also provided kharif and rabi loans worth Rs 1,800 crore and Rs 1,500 crore, respectively.

“The best thing was that we had ensured that the farmers got the money in time. There were clear-cut instructions that 85 per cent of the disbursement should be over by July end. Earlier, this used to stretch up to September, which was too late from the farmers’ point of view,” said Rout.

Moreover, with progressive denudation of forests, more land, irrespective of its quality, has been brought under cultivation over the years helping the state feed an increasing population. On a rough estimate, around 20 per cent of the state’s forest cover have vanished in the past few decades despite claims to the contrary being made by some government agencies. A sizeable chunk in southern Orissa, where 60,000 acres of forestland were set aside for the Dandakaranya project in the undivided Koraput district, has been brought under cultivation.

None of these, however, convincingly explains the paradox of high productivity amid claims of damage due to natural calamities year after year. Sources said on a more realistic note, most of these claims were exaggerated aimed at extracting the maximum possible financial assistance from the Centre. In the process, however, the state’s image at the national-level has suffered badly.

“It is true that nature has been against us for sometime now. We no more benefit from the monsoon owing to a variety of factors. But, the situation is certainly not as grim as we have been prone to painting it. Despite occasional awards like the one we have won today, we will be generally perceived by the Centre as a low-productivity area and denied the kind of assistance that the high-productivity states such as, Punjab, have been getting for boosting agriculture,” said an officer.

Rout, who in the past has time and again dismissed allegations of farmers’ suicide in the state, should agree though he may not say so in so many words. “It is all a matter of how a policy is implemented” was his rather cryptic remark.