CM KCR likely to announce special plan for farm sector: Niranjan Reddy

Agriculture Minister S Niranjan Reddy emphasised the need to bring radical changes in farming and asked farmers to focus on cultivating all types of crops, instead of paddy alone. He instructed the officials to expedite the crop enumeration which was started on August 15 and conduct field visits to complete it within next 10 days. Based on the report submitted, Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao will announce a special plan for agricultural progress in the State.

The Minister reviewed Vaanakalam (Kharif) crop acreage, crop pattern, production and paddy procurement during the monsoon season at the office of Agriculture Commissioner in Hyderabad on Wednesday.

The Minister insisted that the crop registration/enumeration must be done properly, with cent per cent accuracy. For the last three years, there had been crop-wise registration and this time, the crop cultivation was being recorded on the basis of survey number-wise maps in the Dharani portal to be more accurate. The officials concerned were instructed not to assign any other work to the staff who were involved in crop enumeration, unless it was absolutely necessary.

Reddy appealed to the farmers to change their farm practices and cultivate all types of



crops on rotation based on local climatic conditions rather than cultivating paddy alone. Scientists at Professor Jayanshankar Telangana State Agriculture University (PJTSAU), suggested promoting cultivation of pulses along with oil seeds such as groundnut, mustard, sesame, safflower and sunflower. Accordingly, the department was gearing up to conduct training classes for farmers in this regard.

As part of promoting oil seeds during Yasangi (Rabi) season, the authorities should immediately look into the possibility of supplying subsidised seed to increase groundnut cultivation as per the suggestion made by the Chief Minister, he asserted.

Food Corporation of India (FCI) general manager Deepak Sharma reiterated that the corporation would purchase only 60 lakh tonnes of paddy from Telangana during the current agriculture year where only fine variety rice would be procured. 

He said the FCI would not purchase coarse variety of paddy from next season and procure only fine variety of paddy. He suggested the farmers against cultivating paddy during the next Yasangi (Rabi) season and urged the State government to create awareness among farmers in this regard.