Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Friday held a high-level review meeting to take stock of the agriculture situation in the state in the wake of the flash floods and heavy rains that lashed Telangana.
At the review meeting held at Pragati Bhavan, the Chief Minister discussed with Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar, top officials from the agriculture Department, civil supplies and marketing department over the purchase of agricultural crops cultivated in the monsoon season.
He instructed officials to make all arrangements for purchasing crops across the state. The Chief Minister asked the officials to make a detailed report on various aspects of agriculture including the number of acres in which crops were cultivated and the disadvantages of cultivating maize in monsoon.
Rao announced that maize will be purchased at Minimum Support Price (MSP) of Rs 1,850 per quintal for the current monsoon season.
“The maize will be purchased by the Telangana State Marketing Federation (TS MarkFed) through the purchase centres established in the villages for the paddy procurement,” Rao said at the meeting. He appealed to the farmers not to cultivate maize in the upcoming Yasangi season.
“If the farmers cultivate maze during the Yasangi season, the government will take no responsibility and will not procure the crop. We are not in a position to purchase maize cultivated in the Yasangi season. MarkFed had purchased nine lakh tonnes at Rs 1,668 crore during the recent Yasangi season. Maize has no demand across the country. We had to sell the maize through the open market at Rs 823 crore and TS Markfed had to incur a loss of Rs 845 crore. loss for TS MarkFed,” he stated.
He said the Telangana government had suggested to the farmers that maize can be cultivated as intercrop along with turmeric in Nizamabad, Nirmal, Jagtial and other districts, but the farmers did not pay heed to the government’s advice. “Now, they have incurred heavy losses. I once again appeal to the farmers not to cultivate maize during the upcoming Yasangi season,” he said.
He squarely blamed the Central government for drop in maize prices stating that the Modi government had reduced the import duty from 50 per cent to 15 per cent.
