Ministers S. Niranjan Reddy (Agriculture) and Gangula Kamalakar (Civil Supplies) have appealed to the farming community in Telangana not to cultivate paddy, particularly the common variety, in the Yasangi (rabi) season as the Centre has informed the State Government in writing that it was not going to procure boiled rice henceforth.
Assuring the farmers that they would not have any problem in disposing the paddy produced in the kharif (Vanakalam) season as the State Government was ready to procure both the common and fine varieties of paddy at the minimum support price of ₹1,940 and ₹1,960 per quintal, respectively, with the fair average quality specifications.
They stated that the government had plans to open 6,570 paddy procurement centres based on the progress of harvesting in districts. Of them, 2,142 purchase centres had already been opened so far and a quantity 2.36 lakh quintals was purchased from 3,565 farmers.
Stating that flow of paddy was slow to the purchase centre, irrespective of the allegations being made by the opposition parties that farmers were resorting to distress sale due to non-opening of purchase centres, the Ministers cited the example of Suryapet and Nalgonda districts where 86 purchase centres were opened so far but not even a kg of grain was brought to them by the farmers.
The Ministers said a section of farmers were selling fine (Grade-A) varieties of paddy directly to millers either due to their understanding with the millers or because of getting better than the support price. It was such farmers who had placed copies of their pattadar passboks in queue for getting tokens issued by millers, they pointed out.
Mr. Niranjan Reddy appealed to the farming community again not to cultivate paddy this rabi season unless they have tie-up the seed companies or millers since the FCI had made it clear already that it would not procure boiled rice from the rabi season. As the weather conditions in Telangana would not allow production of quality rice in rabi, the grain grown in the season had to be converted into boiled rice to keep the broken rice percentage low, he explained.
He also suggested them to advance paddy, if taken up, by a month to lessen the impact on its quality. He told farmers not to raise paddy in rabi with the hope that government would purchase it and instead go for alternative crops such as blackgram as the government was ready to procure it at MSP of ₹6,300 per quintal and crops such as groundnut and safflower too command good price in the open market.
Stating that farmers did not cultivate cotton as expected by the government in kharif, he said paddy was taken up in 62.08 lakh acres and cotton in less 46.5 lakh acres out of 1.41 crore acres cultivated. However, farmers were getting at least ₹3,000 more per quintal compared to the MSP of 6,025 and it would have demand even if grown in 1 crore acres, Mr. Reddy said.
