Encourage farmers to raise alternative crops: Botcha Satyanarayana

Anantapur: District in-charge Minister Botcha Satyanarayana has directed the district administration to explore possibilities for introducing alternative commercial crops to fill up the gap caused by dwindling groundnut acreage in the district.

Presiding over the District Development Review Committee (DDRC) meeting here on Wednesday, Botcha also asked officials concerned to organise sand depots in all the 7 municipal towns in the district. He also directed them to open sand depots within 5 km radius of the Jagananna Housing Colonies.

The in-charge Minister regretted that despite the district registering more than normal rainfall, the cultivation of groundnut crop declined drastically. He asked agriculture officials to study the reasons for the decline and suggest alternative commercial crops.

He instructed the officials to discuss the issue at the district level Agri Advisory Board meeting and advise the farmers accordingly. The issue should be a matter of continuous study by officials and scientists.

He also asked irrigation officials to make note of all the problems brought to their notice and take rapid action.

Botcha also assured the MLAs who raised the issue of climate based insurance which is in vogue and is not helpful to farmers, that he would discuss with the government on replacing climate based insurance with productivity linked insurance payment. The Minister gave one week's time to irrigation officials to attend to all issues raised by the MLAs concerned. He also promised to take up the problems raised with the state level irrigation officials to speed up the action. He also assured to release 30 to 40 per cent of NREGS related buildings construction bills in a week, of the pending bills worth Rs 140 crore.

All the district MLAs, MLCs and district officers were present.Minister for Roads and Buildings M Sankara Narayana and District Collector Nagalakshmi Selvarajan also spoke.