Minister for Agriculture S. Niranjan Reddy has requested the Centre to enhance the assistance to the agriculture sector in Telangana by relaxing the norms of PM-KISAN, helping establishing agri-allied industries, food processing units and reducing import duty on oil-palm nurseries (seedlings).
He spoke in a meeting organised by Union Minister for Agriculture Narendra Singh Tomar, Union Minister for Commerce, Industries and Food Piyush Goyal, Ministers of State for Agriculture Kailash Chaudhury and Shobha Karandlaje with Agriculture Ministers of States on agriculture infrastructure fund, PK-KISAN, kisan credit cards, digital agriculture policy, oilseeds, pulses, oil palm mission and agriculture exports.
Seeking more assistance to agriculture in Telangana, Mr. Niranjan Reddy said there were about 63.26 lakh landholdings with a total extent of 1.5 crore acres. He stated that 91.48% landholders were small and marginal farmers. However, the PM-KISAN benefit was reaching only 35.19 lakh farmers due to guidelines on the eligibility.
Requesting the Centre to extend the PM-KISAN benefit to every small and marginal farmer in the State, the minister said in the eighth phase of the Centre’s scheme Telangana had received only ₹703.81 crore assistance, while the State Government was spending ₹15,000 crore on investment support given at ₹10,000 per acre a year under Rythu Bandhu scheme without any restrictions.
As part of diverting farmers from paddy to other crops the State Government was promoting oilpalm plantation on a large scale with a target to cultivate it in 20 lakh acres by 2024-25. However, the import duty on oilpalm seedlings was affecting the plans adversely as it was hiked to 30% from 5% so far, Mr. Niranjan Reddy said and requested the Centre to limit the duty to only 5%.
Similarly, he also urged the Centre to relax the extent limit for providing micro irrigation subsidy for oilpalm plantation to encourage the farmers. He also sought mini kits for one-lakh acres to encourage groundnut cultivation in Rabi (Yasangi) on a large scale, also to divert farmers from paddy.
Further, he also sought relaxation in the procurement of pulses and procure entire quantity produced in the State as redgram, greengram and blackgram had huge demand in the market. To encourage exports, he sought subsidies for sorting, processing, grading and packing of processing pulses.
