The increase in the extent of cultivation and sharp rise in production of a few major crops following implementation of supportive measures by the State government has not only brought joy but also fears as the marketing of such a huge quantity would always pose a major challenge, Minister for Agriculture S. Niranjan Reddy said.
Speaking after a meeting with the officials of agriculture and marketing departments on procurement of yasangi (rabi) crops here on Tuesday, the Minister said it was the responsibility of the government to educate the farming community on market conditions and cropping patterns based on market research and analysis.
To help the government on suggesting farmers about the market conditions and suggest the crops having demand in the national and international markets, they had appointed Ernst & Young, an agency having expertise in the area.
Suggesting more changes in the cropping pattern in the State, the Minister asked farmers to further increase the cultivation of cotton, groundnut and red gram as the present pattern of growing crops could raise serious marketing problems in future. Besides, the Centre was also understood to be planning to shed some responsibilities related to agricultural marketing and procurement, he pointed out.
He stated that cotton was cultivated in about 61 lakh acres in the 2020 kharif season following an advise by the government. It could be increased further as the quality of cotton produced in the State was top in the country. Similarly, red gram was also cultivated in a large extent (11 lakh acres) and the farmers got better price than the support price in the open market.
He asked farmers to increase the cultivation of superfine varieties of paddy in kharif (vanakalam) season as the production of common grade paddy was much higher than the demand. Of the nearly 54 lakh acres of paddy grown, superfine varieties were taken up in about 20 lakh acres.
On the storage capacity, the Minister said it was 65 lakh tonnes now and the government was planning construction of warehousing space for another 40 lakh tonnes with the cooperation of Central Warehousing Corporation.
Paddy was cultivated in nearly 53 lakh acres this yasangi (rabi) season and the production was estimated to be 1.32 crore tonnes. As agreed, the Food Corporation of India (FCI) was expected to procure 80 lakh tonnes and another 20 lakh tonnes could be purchased by traders. Another 10 lakh tonnes each would be consumed by people and used as seed.
The Minister suggested paddy farmers to get their produce by following the specifications on moisture and chaff content.
