Start paddy procurement from April 15, CM Jagan tells officials

VIJAYAWADA: Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has asked officials to start the rabi season’s paddy procurement from April 15 and carry out the enumeration on crop loss due to the untimely rains.

“Ensure that there are no substandard, spurious or adulterated fertilisers, insecticides and pesticides. Remove them from the market and ensure quality stuff reach farmers through the Rythu Bharosa Kendras,” he advised the officials at a review meeting he held here on agriculture on Wednesday.

“Continuous monitoring is required to ensure that the farmers are not subjected to hardships. The enumeration of crop loss due to the recent untimely rain should be completed at the earliest,” he said.

The Chief Minister asked the officials to implement the Plant Doctor concept and have the soil tests done in March, April and May every year, so as to prepare the farmers for the Kharif season by June and educate them on the crops to be cultivated.

The plant doctor concept also should be implemented and this must be made accessible to farmers through RBKs, he suggested.

The officials said they would release the list of the farmers who have suffered crop loss by the second week of April. E-cropping has been completed while efforts were on to distribute 10.5 lakh metric tonnes of quality fertilisers to farmers through RBKs in 2023-24, they said.

Pesticides would be supplied to farmers through AP Agros, they said.

Explaining about the Polambadi training programmes being planned for farmers, the officials said the expenses have come down by 15 per cent, 15 per cent, 12 per cent and 5 per cent in the cultivation of paddy, groundnut, cotton and maize respectively. The yield of cotton, maize, groundnut and paddy has gone up by 16 per cent, 15 per cent, 12 per cent and 9 per cent respectively.

The officials said the results could be the first step towards the introduction of complete natural farming methods. “We are trying to get Good Agricultural Practices certificates for 26 farmer producer organisations (FPO),” they added.

The Chief Minister gave his nod for distribution of agricultural machine tools to farmers next month, 500 drones and tarpaulins in July, another 1,500 drones by December, and sprayers between July and December.

Stating that millet and organic clusters have been arranged in 19 districts as part of the efforts to increase millet production in the state, Jagan Mohan Reddy advised the officials to concentrate on methods for marketing millets and horticultural products.

The officials informed him that the state has achieved 3.79 lakh metric tonnes of paddy production in the rabi season of 2022-23 while it was 6.29 lakh metric tonnes in the 2022 kharif season.

Agriculture minister Govardhan Reddy, Agri Mission vice-chairman M.V.S. Nagireddy, advisers to government Tirupal Reddy (Agriculture) and Sivaprasada Reddy (Horticulture),  AP Agros chairman Navin Nischal,  principal secretary (agriculture) Gopalakrishna Dwivedi, special commissioner (agriculture) C. Harikiran, Horticultural commissioner S.S. Sridhar, MARKFED MD Rahul Pandey, APSSDCS VC & MD Dr Sekhar Babu, AP Agros VC & MD Krishna Murty and other senior officials were present.