Oil seeds, pulses, maize may see 20% rise in production

The Andhra Pradesh government is anticipating an enhanced production in oil seeds, pulses and maize of up to 20 per cent over last year's production during the ensuing kharif season on account of additional acreage and improvement in yield levels in the state. The season normally begins in the second week of June in the state.

The increase in acreage is due to the efforts of agricultural department, which is encouraging farmers to go for non-conventional oil seeds such as sunflower and soyabean besides maize and pulses for crop diversification, particularly in areas where the soils are not suitable for chillies, cotton or other commercial crops.

At a recent village level farmers' awareness campaign conducted by the Commissionerate of Agriculture through its extension network, farmers expressed their willingness to switch to these crops from the water-intensive paddy and commercial crops such as chillies in an extent of 15 lakh acres, according to Poonam Malakondaiah, commissioner of agriculture, Government of Andhra Pradesh.

Apart from this, an 8-9 per cent increase in yield levels is also being targeted through integrated nutrition, pest control and crop management initiatives, she said.

The government believes that there is enough demand-supply gap for these crops to ensure stable prices even in the face of additional production, especially in oil seeds and maize.

From this year onwards, the state government is doing away with the conventional practice of announcing state-level production plans prior to the commencement of sowing operations. Instead, the government, through its agricultural extension network, has gone for village-level production with the help of farmers and village officials.

Thus, the state-level outlook for the production of respective crops would be evolved on the basis of village plans and only after the actual sowing operations are completed, say in July- end, according to the commissioner.

"We realised that no such broadbased plans will work after the WTO norms came into effect. To make agriculture more competitive, we have now opted for location-specific farming programmes with the overall aim of cutting down the costs of cultivation and increasing the crop production," she told Business Standard.

This time round, APMarkfed and other agencies would work out advance plans for procurement of these produce basing on more accurate inputs furnished by the agricultural department. This is to help farmers whenever there is a fall in market prices.

The government is also mulling to announce extra incentive on the minimum support price (MSP) to specific crops such as maize and jowar to encourage crop diversification.

Under the awareness-cum-survey campaign held between March 15 and May 25, 2005, agricultural extension officials visited 50,000-odd villages in the state to determine three important issues "� figure out the three major crops grown in each village, their productivity and identify the technology gaps affecting the yield levels.

"We were shocked to see that there is a huge technology gap between the main villages and their hamlets which comprises mainly small and marginal farmers. And there is a near absence of seed treatment before sowing," Poonam said.

Unnecessary and excess usage of urea and pesticides, and the private credit interest are the two major factors that have been found to be responsible for the higher cost of cultivation.

"We are tackling the first problem by bringing awareness through training and other means on the judicious usage of fertilisers and pesticides among farmers while addressing the second issue by linking institutional credit," she said.

During the campaign, the department has found out that so far, over 12 lakh farmers in the state did not receive crop loans from banks in their lifetime. The department has passed on the list to banks for credit linkage.

Also, for the first time, the government has targeted to ensure credit to one lakh tenant farmers who were never provided loans either by commercial institutions or co-operative banks this year through the farmers clubs called Rytu Mitra Groups.

"For the first time, banks have started giving loans well ahead of the commencement of kharif operations, which will normally begin from the second week of June. Banks have already disbursed over Rs 10 crore loans to farmers in the remote Srikakulam district alone," Poonam said.

Nutritional management is the other major area the agricultural department is now focusing on this year. Over 10 soil samples from each village have been collected and cards containing remedial measures for each of these soil samples are being dispatched to villages.

"We found that nutritional management is very poor across the state. This time we will try to correct the deficiencies," she said.