NT Reporter
Panaji
Over the last three years, Goa has successfully brought 345.37 hectares of land under community farming, backed by Rs 2.46 crore in financial assistance from the agriculture department under an initiative aimed at encouraging collective cultivation and reducing fallow land.
According to official figures, 26 groups covered 136.56 hectares with assistance of Rs 1.28 crore in 2023-24, 14 groups covered 135.76 hectares with Rs 67.41 lakh in 2024-25 and another 10 groups covered 73.05 hectares with Rs 50.79 lakh assistance in 2025-26.
Agriculture department official Pallavi Shetye said that the scheme helps farmers work together, share infrastructure and lower cultivation costs. “The main objective is to bring uncultivated land back into active cultivation and maintain agricultural activity,”
Shetye said.
In operation since 2013, the initiative covers both Joint Community Farming Groups and Loosely Amalgamated Community Farming Groups. To form an eligible group, at least 10 farmers with a combined landholding of more than one hectare in a compact block must join together. This allows them to make better use of shared facilities such as fencing, irrigation systems, traditional piping and machinery, which reduces individual farm expenditure and simplifies the movement of equipment across multi-plot fields.
The government provides up to 90% financial assistance for common agricultural infrastructure, including fencing, irrigation, compost units, machinery, pump houses and internal field development works. Support extends to quality seeds, planting material, mechanisation, assured price support and horticultural crop expansion.
Recommended primarily for paddy fields due to their seasonal cultivation and harvesting patterns, subsidy support ranges between 75% and 90%, with the 90% infrastructure assistance deposited directly into beneficiaries’ bank accounts.
Farmers can register through local cooperative society offices or online via the Agricultural Technology Management Agency platform. The department continues to actively review registered groups, having recently evaluated 17 of them.
Community farming in Goa is growing as a vital grassroots movement and government-backed initiative to revive paddy cultivation, improve rural productivity and protect arable land.
For years, small landholdings, seasonal labour shortages and rising cultivation expenses led to large tracts of ancestral paddy fields remaining fallow. By pooling small, fragmented plots of land together into compact operational blocks, local farmers can collectively resume active cultivation, particularly for seasonal crops like paddy. This cooperative model allows groups to make farming economically viable again while preserving the state’s traditional agrarian landscape and rich biodiversity.
