Seemingly encouraged by good prices for ragi last year, farmers in most parts of Mysuru district have grown the crop this year and the area under cultivation has also doubled.
Farmers have cultivated ragi on over 38,474 hectares of land this year, compared to 15,640 hectares last year.
According to sources in the Mysuru Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee, the price of ragi reached up to ₹3,525 per quintal last year. The price of ragi in open market is stated to have touched the ₹3,900 mark, per quintal.
The minimum support price of ragi for 2014-15 was ₹1,550 per quintal, and it increased to ₹1,650 per quintal in 2015-16 and later went up to ₹1,725 per quintal in 2016-17.
Somasundra, Joint Director of Agriculture, told The Hindu on Wednesday that ragi was being cultivated on over 38,474 hectares for the khariff season this year and on over 18,000 hectares for the rabi season from September to December-end.
He said farmers will yield 15 quintals per hectare and there will be ragi production of over 5,17,010 quintals in Mysuru district. He said the crop in the entire district was healthy and farmers would get good yield this year.
S. Nagendra, Agriculture Officer, said besides ragi, other prominent crops such as paddy and maize were also being cultivated this season. He said that paddy was being cultivated on over 57,459 hectares while hybrid maize was grown on 5,219 hectares during the khariff season. He said that farmers would get yield of 48 quintals of paddy per hectare.
Good yield
Similarly, farmers will get an yield of at least 45 quintals of maize per hectare in the district, he said. Fortunately, all the prominent crops have come up well, he said and claimed that the Agriculture Department had taken precautionary measures to protect standing crops from pests and diseases.
Besides, pulses such as red gram, black gram, green gram and horse gram which were cultivated as inter-crop have also come up very well in the entire district, Mr. Nagendra said and added that crops may provide a kind of relief to the farming community this year.
