"Efforts On For Food Grains Target"

Minister for Agriculture N Raghuveera Reddy on Thursday said that the state government will take necessary steps to achieve the target of 209 lakh metric tons of food grain production this year.

Talking to media persons at the launch of a farmer awareness campaign undertaken by the Agriculture Department, Reddy said the farmers of the state have created a record by producing 204.21 lakh metric tons of food grains in 2008-09.

He praised their efforts by mentioning that they had achieved 149.70 lakh metric tons of food grains production in 2009-10, in spite of the vagaries of nature. Reddy said even hostile weather conditions like floods and drought had not deterred the will of the ryots.

The Agriculture Minister said that the Met Department had forecast rains in the next 3 to 4 days, and hoped that the deficiency would be filled by these rains. He said that 85.5mm rainfall had been registered from June 1 so far, against the normal rainfall of 94.4 mm.

Medak, Nalgonda, Nizamabad, Adilabad and Karimnagar districts have registered quite low rainfall, he added.

The farmers in the state would get 30 lakh metric tons of seed with the Rs. 372-crore subsidy. For the kharif season, 18.3 lakh quintals of seed was ready and 13 lakh tons of stocks were made available in the mandals. In all, 8 lakh quintals of seed has been already distributed to the farmers.

About 77 lakh packets of Bt cotton seed were also readied to be supplied among the farmers.

The Agriculture Department also has a target of Rs. 41,913 crore crop loans to farmers this year, he added. For the purpose of the kharif season, 71.50 lakh metric tons of fertilizers were kept ready, he said. District Collectors were given powers to select the distributors of fertilizers.