Urgent meeting of states called to discuss crop contigency plan

The Ministry of Agriculture has called an urgent meeting of 18 states in the wake of delayed rains next week and prepare state specific contingency plan for crops.

According to official sources, the meeting has been called to discuss the preparedness of the states to handle less rainfall or drought like situations. States have been asked to set aside a portion of funds allocated under the flagship scheme of Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY) for drought like situation preparedness. Diesel subsidy and its estimation is also one of the proposals to be discussed, said official sources. The basic crop related strategy  to be discussed include building up reserve of seeds for alternate less water consuming varieties for state specific requirement and its faster distribution across states.

Various states which will be attending the meeting in the first leg are Punjab, Haryana, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal, Assam and Jharkhand. In the second stage,  the states called for the meeting are those  which do not have much problem with rainfall  but their overall productivity may  get affected due to overall shortfall in the rains. These are Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Telangana, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.

While this  meeting will discuss state specific issues and their respective preparedness, a detailed contingency plan was prepared by the ministry of agriculture as part of Kharif 2014 as an overall guidance note for all states. It had  planned for the states to meet different situations arising out of delayed/deficient rainfall, prolonged spells of drought, excess rainfall etc.

The plan involved contingency plans for 449 districts in 23 states and  the states of Karnataka, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, which have higher frequency of drought, were already  put on high alert. These states have been already asked to be prepared with sufficient seeds of short duration varieties of kharif crops and timely placement of inputs such as seeds and fertilisers.

The meeting also held crop-specific strategies for higher production of kharif rice, pulses, coarse cereals and oilseeds. As an overall strategy, the planning for kharif 2014 has to focus on eastern India for cereals, crop diversification in North-Western Region and coverage of higher area under pulses and oilseeds along with adequate administrative and financial back up to farmers.

There are proposals of subsidy to given to replace old varieties of paddy with hybrid rice, use of farm saved seeds and drum seeder in Uttar Pradesh, to promote direct seeded rice in Jharkhand, hybrid rice cultivation in Odisha, zero tillage of rice in West Bengal.

More area under millets is one of the main agenda for Kharif 2014 and it will be pursued, said officials. The Centre for excellence for millets established in Tamilnadu has been given the mandate for increasing acreage under irrigated maize and productivity enhancement by use of millets/maize boosters should be promoted and rice area should be diverted in maize in Haryana. Officials said s per the plan, for enhanced production of millets, detailed plan has been suggested to states. As per the plan, there is a need to popularise foxtail millets under rainfed conditions and rice fallow ragi where pulses could not be grown in Tamil Nadu; single cross hybrids maize for higher productivity and quality protein maize in Jharkhand. Towards this, subsidy at the rate of 75% of the total cost of the production will be given to develop hybrid maize in Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.