Minister for IT, Industries and Municipal Administration K.T. Rama Rao has stated that agriculture sector in Telangana is making rapid strides towards comprehensive growth from the crisis at the time of State formation in 2014.
Speaking at a meeting of the Cabinet Sub-Committee on Agriculture here on Tuesday he said four revolutions in the agriculture and allied sectors were taking place in Telangana with second green revolution (agriculture) started with pro-farmer policies and commendable work of the Agriculture Department. Blue revolution was on with development of fisheries, pink revolution with sheep scheme and white revolution with dairy sector growth.
Citing an example of transformation with the help of agriculture, Mr. Rama Rao said Ellanthakunta village in Rajanna-Sircilla district was a perennially drought-prone area but not farmers there were harvesting riches with provision of irrigation and free power. He stated that it was the agriculture sector that had the capacity change the future of the State as about 2 crore people in the State were depending directly or indirectly on agriculture.
He suggested setting up food processing industries on a large scale to turn agriculture into an industry. He also mooted that the sub-committee meet Prof. M.S. Swaminathan, Jayati Ghosh, P. Sainath, Subhash Palekar to make the farm sector remunerative and attractive. A team should also visit agriculture museum at Iowa in the USA, the country which gets 9% contribution to its GDP from agriculture from just 3% population depending on it.
Further, he suggested establishment of demonstration farmers in 32 districts in 50 to 100 acre area. Asking the Agriculture Department to make best use of technology, Mr. Rama Rao told them to examining giving phablets so that they could get timely information on dealing with crop management and encourage the youth to innovate farmer-friendly technologies, including use of drones.
Minister for Agriculture S. Niranjan Reddy said there was need to turn the future generations towards agriculture and allied sectors as there was no alternative to food, which was one of the vital requirements for survival of any form of life. He stated that food produced in China was being consumed there itself and the numbers of those engaged in farming was coming down fast in the USA, the two countries having highest cultivable land in the world.
He appealed to legislators and other elected representatives to encourage farmers to take up groundnut cultivation in Rabi (Yasangi) on a large scale as there was huge demand for aflatoxin-free peanut in the world market. The value of agricultural produce in the State was ₹40,000 crore in 2014, while it had reached ₹94,500 crore now.
Ministers A. Indrakaran Reddy, P. Sabitha Indra Reddy, P. Ajay Kumar and G. Jagadish Reddy also spoke.
