Union tourism minister G. Kishan Reddy on Sunday wrote to Piyush Goyal, his counterpart in the food ministry, urging the Centre to procure 15 lakh metric tonnes (MT) of parboiled rice from Telangana in the ongoing kharif marketing season (KMS).
Kishan Reddy said that the Central government continued to support the farmers of Telangana in procurement of paddy. Procurement in Telangana
state had increased from 5.35 lakh MTs in the 2015-2016 KMS to more than 20 lakh MTs in last season, he said.
This is clear testimony to the fact that farmer welfare is central to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governance agenda. Pro-farmer centric measures initiated by Modi would benefit farmers of Telangana further, the Union minister said.