Government Aiding Farm Mechanisation: Niranjan Reddy

Telangana Agriculture minister S Niranjan Reddy today said that the state government was committed to aiding the mechanisation of the farm sector, and that it had distributed harvesters and reapers to the farmers of the state in its attempts to encourage them to embrace mechanisation.

Responding to the queries of some MLAs during the Question Hour of today's Budget session, the minister said "A total of 6,66,221 farmers have benefited from our farm mechanisation scheme. We have spent Rs 951.28 crore for the implementation of the same, and are currently preparing an action plan to continue such initiatives in the 2021-22 financial year."

"We are also working to distribute the machines to 50% of the beneficiaries. In this year's Budget, Rs 1500 crore has been set aside for this purpose. It is due to schemes like this that the area under cultivation has been increasing steadily in our state," he added.

Reddy also informed the house that the TRS government would be encouraging the farmers to take up oil palm farming. He said, "The government is pushing oil palm farming in a big way. Farmers in Telangana already grow oil palm across 48,806 acres of land. We have done much to bolster their efforts."

"We have been conducting awareness programs for farmers and local leaders to appraise them of the advantages of taking up oil palm cultivation. Currently, we are working to push up the area on which it is grown, from 48,806 acres to 8 lakh acres of the state. Various incentives will also be introduced to encourage the same," he stated.

Explaining why the TRS government was pushing cultivators to grow oil palm, the minister said that India was using 25 million tonnes of oil palm out of which only 10 million tonnes was being produced domestically, which forced the country to spend a lot of money on importing the rest.

"India is spending huge funds of nearly Rs 90,000 crore because of the shortage in output, nationally. We want Telangana to fill this shortage. Our government believes this will strengthen our farmers economically," he said.