Hyderabad: Surplus, Centre's import policy becomes curse for maize farmers

Hyderabad: Maize cultivation is no longer advisable due to adverse conditions at present in the country and going in for that crop would be unproductive, agriculture experts and senior officials told CM K Chandrashekar Rao on Saturday.

They said that with the policy decisions taken by the Centre on maize import, getting a minimum support price (MSP) for the crop is unlikely. They also said that the New Farm Acts brought in by the Centre, which allowed anybody to sell the agriculture produce anywhere and the reduction of taxes on the import of the commodities has become a curse on the poor farmer.

KCR held a review meeting at Pragathi Bhavan which was attended by Agriculture Minister S Niranjan Reddy and Civil Supplies Minister Gangula Kamalakar and senior officials.

The meeting dwelled at length on the agriculture sector. It was stated that in the international market, there was a surplus of 28 crore metric tonnes of maize. As of date, there is a need for 2.42 crore MT per year in the country but already 3.53 crore MT of corn is available. This would mean, an additional 1.11 crore MT of produce (surplus) is available which is more than the need. To add to this, corn is cultivated in 2.04 crore acres in the country and 4.10 crore MT will soon hit the markets.

With this, the officials told the CM that there are enough stocks of corn available not only for this year but also for the next year too.

To make the matters worse for the local farmers, the Central government had decided to import 5 lakh MT corn. The Centre also reduced the import duty on corn from 50 per cent to 15 per cent, which will result in the corn, produced in the country not getting any MSP and will put the corn farmers to more misery and heavy losses.

Agriculture Minister Niranjan Reddy said that in order to get Telangana farmers a reasonable price for the corn, the State government had discussions with the poultry farmers. Since States like Bihar, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, and UP are quoting a very cheap price for the poultry feed, poultry farmers in the State are not ready to buy the corn produced within the State.

Under these dire circumstances, if farmers in Telangana go in for corn cultivation in the summer season they will incur heavy losses, the officials informed the CM. The officials pointed out that it may not be possible to get an MSP for corn this summer. The officials said that those farmers who, in spite of the fact that they may not get any MSP are free to go in for the crop cultivation.

Government's Chief Advisor Rajiv Sharma, Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar and other senior officials were present.