Telangana giving push to oil palm cultivation
Hyderabad: Oil palm currently fetches about Rs 19,000 per tonne and the productivity is about 15 to 20 tonne per acre
Participating in a seminar on ‘Oil plam cultivation in Telangana’ organised by Mana TV via T-SAT, he said the demand for edible oil in India is about 22 million tonne as against it’s production of only seven million tonne oil seeds. As a result, the country is now importing palm oil worth Rs 70,000 crore.
As per the demand, the country needs to take up palm cultivation in about 80 lakh acre but it is now cultivating only in eight lakh acre. Telangana has now drawn up plans to fill this gap partly, he said.
Oil palm currently fetches about Rs 19,000 per tonne and the productivity is about 15 to 20 tonne per acre. Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao has decided to extend a subsidy of Rs 36,000 per acre, the minister said adding that the State and Central Governments have been encouraging farmers to take up cultivation of sesame, safflower and groundnut among other oil seeds.
Research proved that the oil content in the oil palm being cultivated in the State, is high. Telangana is also making efforts to facilitate drip irrigation equipment and also loans to the farmers intending to take up oil palm cultivation by tying up with local banks, the Minister said urging the farmers to register with the Agriculture department. The government will take them for field visits for understating its cultivation methods.
Paddy is being cultivated in more than one crore acre and production has reached about three crore tonne, which is more than the demand. Telangana is just behind Punjab in rice production, he said urging the farmers to adopt crop rotation. The Chief Minister is in favour of setting up a market research and analysis wing to forecast the market demand, he added.
Telangana continues to be an agrarian State with large scale employment generated through agriculture sector. The government has been focused on employment generation by setting up industries as well as in the IT segment. Telangana has succeeded in creating about 1.35 lakh jobs since the State came into being and the government is also planning to release a job calendar, Niranjan Reddy reiterated.
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