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Farmers shift to pulses
It’s seemingly clear that state government’s campaign for discouraging cotton cultivation this year has paid off with majority of farmers opting for pulses, inversely helping the Centre’s roadmap to achieve pulses self-sufficiency by increasing production in the next four years.
Warangal: It’s seemingly clear that state government’s campaign for discouraging cotton cultivation this year has paid off with majority of farmers opting for pulses, inversely helping the Centre’s roadmap to achieve pulses self-sufficiency by increasing production in the next four years.
Farmers, who earlier appeared averse to take up the cultivation of pulses, have finally heeded to the government’s call. It may be mentioned here that India is the largest producer, consumer and importer of pulses.
The efforts of the agriculture department to increase crop area of pulses like red gram, green gram and black gram appear to be on the right track. With good monsoon so far in the region, the farmers’ move to go for pulses cultivation is likely to ensure them good returns this season.
At the start of the kharif season, the agricultural officials appeared skeptical whether their campaign discouraging farmers from cultivating cotton would pay off or not. However, as the sowing season progressed, the officials heaved sigh of relief with the farmers going for the cultivation of pulses.
While the normal sowing area of the pulses in the state is 4.04 lakh hectares, the latest report (August 3) of the agricultural department says that farmers took up sowing of the crop on a whopping 5.74 lakh hectares. Of which red gram is sown in 3.85 lakh hectares and green gram in 1.44 lakh hectares.
It may be mentioned here that pulses cultivation in 2014 and 2015 was in just 3.09 lakh hectares and 3.36 lakh hectares respectively. For the first time farmers appeared wary of cash crop cotton with the crop failing them for the last few years.
Albeit the price of cotton touched a record high of Rs 7,000 per quintal at the fag end of the season, it appears that farmers weighed the merits of going in for alternatives and chose pulses as suggested by the agriculture department.
As a result, cultivation of cotton fell to 11.81 lakh hectares as against the normal area of 17.08 lakh hectares in the state. Last year it was 16.15 lakh hectares.
Speaking to The Hans India, Warangal Joint Director of Agriculture Usha Dayal said “While the normal area of cultivation of pulses in the district is 28,174 hectares, as on date sowing is completed in 40,423 hectares. A steep drop in the cultivation of cotton bodes well for farmers as they invariably suffered losses for the last few years.”
She expressed confidence that farmers would get good returns as they will get an opportunity to go for another crop after harvesting pulses.
Meanwhile, paddy transplantation is yet to gain momentum in the state. As on date, transplantation of paddy is completed only in 3.15 lakh hectares against the normal area of 9.86 lakh hectares. Paddy cultivation fell drastically in last two kharif seasons also due to prevailing drought conditions in the region. While paddy was cultivated in 3.72 lakh hectares in 2014, it was just 2.17 lakh hectares in 2015.
