Telangana to boost paddy, cotton procurement

Hyderabad: With record production of paddy and cotton in the current Kharif season, the state government is making arrangements to improve the procuring of the crop.

Agriculture minister S. Niranjan Reddy told this newspaper that in the current Kharif season, paddy was sowed in 41. 35 lakh acres and they are expecting around 65 lakh metric tonnes of produce compared to 41 lakh metric tonnes in the Kharif season of 2018.

“In view of the record production, we are setting up 3,500 procurement centres across the state and so far, 1,100 centres have already been established and around 1.1 metric tonnes of crop have been procured,” the minister added.

He said that Rs 1,815 has been fixed MSP for common variety of paddy per bag and Rs 1,835 per bag for Grade-A paddy. The  recent market rate is Rs 1,581 to `1,608 per bag of common paddy and Rs 1,436 to Rs 1,661 per bag of Grade–A paddy.

Mr Reddy said that on 22.11 lakh hectares, cotton was sawn  and it is expected to produce 54.63 lakh MTs more than the last year and it will be the highest production so far in the history of the State.

He said that the Centre has increased MSP for Cotton from Rs 5,450 to Rs 5,550. He said that the move could bring down the market prices globally.

The minister said that the director of agriculture marketing in September submitted proposals to the CMD of CCI, Mumbai for opening of 340 centers in the state in the interest of the farming community. The CMD has finalised 96 AMC centers in the state under which 252 ginning mills would be developed as CCI procurement centers to help the cotton farmers, he added.

He said heavy collection of cotton will begin from November 15 and collection of paddy is also set begin in many of the districts of the state.