15,000 oil palm saplings planted in single day at Wanaparthy

Mahabubnagar: The district authorities of Wanaparthy district have achieved a unique record of planting 15,000 oil palm plants across 313 acres of Agriculture land in a single day on Saturday.

Agriculture Minister Singireddy Niranjan Reddy, who took part in the mass plantation programme of Palm Oil plants at Mushti Balishwar farm over 5 acres of land in Chityala village of Wanaparthy district said that the farmers of Wanaparthy district will stand as an example to others in the Oil Palm plantation in the State, as the district has achieved the record of planting 15000 plant saplings in a single day."

Mass planting of oil palm plantation programmes were held across various mandals in the district and these mandals includes Atmakuru 88.17 acres, Pebbair 42.77 acres, Kottakotta 38.77 acres, Wanaparthi 37.60 acres, Pangal 30.64 acres, Amarachinta 20.47 acres, Gopalpet 17 acres, Madanapur 15 acres, Peddamandadi 14 acres, Srirangapur 4.57 acres and Revalli 4.57 acres.

While speaking at the mass plantation programme, the Agriculture Minister said that farmers can achieve higher yields by adopting crop diversification and they need to move away from the traditional cultivation and adopt new and modern cultivation systems for reducing the growing labour costs and to achieve better income from agriculture, advised the minister.

"Oil Palm cultivation is the only crop in the country which has a buy back policy by the state and central governments. And Oil Palm cultivation is the only crop that assures net income per farmer," said the minister while assuring the farmers that oil palm cultivation is more profitable compared to other traditional crops.

Adding further he said that the Telangana is the only State in the country that is moving ahead in the country to achieve a target of planting oil palm plants over an area of 20 lakh acres in the state.

"We are importing cooking oil worth Rs 80,000 crore annually. It is therefore very much important to spread awareness on oil palm cultivation," said the minister.

He informed that during the past few days the agriculture department had conducted 79 field trips and created awareness among 8460 farmers on oil palm plantations. Except paddy, the farmers can grow all kinds of crops inside the oil palm plantations as inter crop and can get better profits from multiple cropping methods.