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Windfall for oil palm farmers in Telangana
The oil palm farmers, who seriously contemplated shifting their focus on coconut farming one-and-a-half-year ago due to not too impressive support price for their produce and inadequate crushing facilities in the region, are on cloud nine with the price hitting a new peak this month.
Aswaraopet: The oil palm farmers, who seriously contemplated shifting their focus on coconut farming one-and-a-half-year ago due to not too impressive support price for their produce and inadequate crushing facilities in the region, are on cloud nine with the price hitting a new peak this month.
Never before in the country, the price of oil palm fresh fruit bunches (FFBs) hit the mark of Rs 9,073 per tonne.
Since the government had established a 10-tonne an hour crushing capacity unit at Aswaraopet in 2007, the farmers who took up the cultivation of oil palm enjoyed a better economic situation than others.
With more farmers turning to oil palm cultivation, the authorities raised the capacity of the unit to 15-tonne an hour a few years ago. Despite this, the farmers had a miserable time in 2015 due to inability of the unit in processing the abundant inflows of the oil palm FFBs.
As a result, FFBs putrefied causing a huge loss to farmers. The angry farmers even set their produce on fire near the unit.
Adding more woes, the availability of oil palm at low cost in the international market resulted in stagnation of oil stocks in the processing units.
Against this backdrop, the farmers gave a serious thought of shifting their focus to other options, especially the coconut farming.
Meanwhile identifying the farmers’ needs, the Oil Fed started the works of another unit with a capacity of 30-tonne per hour at Apparaopet under Dammapet mandal. It’s set to commence its operations from Ugadi, this year.
Against this backdrop, the Telangana State Oil Fed has notified the price of FFBs at Rs 9,073 per tonne for February bettering the January price of Rs 8,662 per tonne. Meanwhile, the AP Oil Fed, the other big player in the industry, is offering a price of Rs 8,690 per tonne.
“This is highest ever price in the country,” TS Oil Fed regional manager R Udaydheer Reddy told The Hans India. According to him, the extent of oil palm cultivation in Khammam and Bhadradri-Kothagudem districts is around 12,000 hectares.
The production of FFBs is 81,000 tonnes in the current financial year, he said, stating that they have plans to raise it to 1.29 lakh tonnes in 2017-18. Referring to the increase of oil palm cultivation to the extent of 465 hectares in 2016-17, he said they have plans to promote the cultivation in another 1,000 hectares for the 2017-18 fiscal.
Dammapet Oil Palm Rythu Seva Sangham president Dara Tata Rao said: “It would augur well for the farmers if the government encourages oil palm plantation through Haritha Haram. It will be useful to farmers and the government.”
