Agriculture Minister B.C. Patil on Monday maintained that there was no shortage of either sowing seeds or fertilizers for the kharif season.
Addressing a press conference in Bengaluru, the Minister who recently toured 12 districts to review their availability, said the State had adequate storage of both.
“A target of sowing 77 lakh hectares for kharif has been set. For this, the demand for sowing seeds is six lakh quintals. However, we have a storage of 7.74 lakh tonnes of which 1.79 lakh tonnes have already been distributed,” he said.
Similarly, the demand for fertilizers from April to June 12 was 12,77,815 tonnes. “We had a storage of 19,56,825 tonnes of which 7,84,075 tonnes have been distributed so far. We are still left with a storage of about 11 lakh metric tonnes of fertilizers.”
The Minister said if anyone brings the issue of shortage or problems in supply to his notice, he would immediately attend to them.
Mr. Patil said that Karnataka had seen a record foodgrains production of 153 lakh tonnes for 2020-21. This was 10 per cent higher than the previous year’s production as against the country’s growth rate of 2 per cent, he added.