HYDERABAD: Chief minister
K Chandrasekhar Rao
on Tuesday continued his tirade against the BJP government, stating that the central government is pursuing policies detrimental to the interests of farmers and agricultural sector in India. He directed agriculture officials to prepare plans to encourage farmers to take up cultivation of profit-making alternate crops in more acres than paddy in the ensuing vaanakalam (kharif) season.
He said officials should prepare district-wise plans to encourage farmers to take up cultivation of cotton, chilli, red gram (
kandi pappu
), sunflower and watermelon in a big way in the ensuing vaanakalam season.
Though the Centre has said it would continue to take raw rice from the state and vaanakalam paddy produced in
Telangana could be milled into raw rice to a maximum extent (unlike yasangi paddy which gives more broken rice and suitable for milling it into boiled rice),
KCR has directed the officials to ensure that the farmers go for alternate crops when compared to paddy.
TRS leaders have been alleging that the Narendra Modi government is trying to ultimately do away with procurement of rice by
FCI
. In the current yasangi too, the state government had advised farmers to go for alternate crops due to which paddy cultivation came down by 17 lakh acres in Telangana.
The CM said the demand for Telangana cotton was high in the international market. "Already, cotton is getting up to 13,000 per quintal and prospects of the price going up are high. Even chilli is getting 42,000 per quintal. There is demand for red gram and sunflowers too," he said.
"Educate the farmers that cultivation of paddy continuously for a long time lessens the fertility of the soil. Switching over to alternate crops like cotton, chilli, kandi pappu and sunflower will improve the soil condition, its fertility and yield," the CM told the agriculture officials at a review meet.