Telangana to discourage corn cultivation

HYDERABAD: Telangana government has decided to discourage corn (maize) cultivation in yasangi (summer agriculture season) in view of unfavourable conditions— marketing and storage facility— prevailing in the country. Going by the present conditions, it may not be possible to get minimum support price (MSP) for corn. However, farmers, who want to still go for corn, are free to cultivate it.
CM K Chandrasekhar Rao held a meeting with agriculture officials and experts on crops that need to be encouraged as part of regulatory cultivation and marketing in the state. The experts informed the CM the new agriculture bill, approved by the Centre, had created adverse conditions for corn. They said with the policy decisions on corn import, getting MSP for corn was unlikely. Now, anybody could sell their produce anywhere in the country and the reduction of taxes on the import of commodities has become a curse on the poor farmer.
During the meeting, it came to light that there was a surplus of 28 crore metric tonnes of corn in international market. “As on date, there is a requirement of 2.42 crore MT of corn in the country, but the country produced 3.53 crore MT. This means, there is a surplus of 1.11 crore MT. Adding to this, corn is cultivated in 2.04 crore acres in the country and 4.10 crore MT will soon hit the markets,” the officials informed.
Officials said in the given scenario, there were enough reserves of corn not only for this year, but also for the next.
To make matters worse for local farmers, the Centre has decided to import five lakh MT. The Centre also reduced the import duty on corn from 50% to 15%, which would result in the corn, produced in the country, not getting MSP, causing more misery and heavy losses to farmers.
Agriculture minister Niranjan Reddy said in order to get Telangana farmers a reasonable price for corn, the state government had discussions with poultry farmers. Since states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and UP were quoting a very cheap price for poultry feed, poultry farmers in the state were not ready to buy corn produced within the state.
“Under these dire circumstances, if farmers in Telangana go in for corn cultivation in summer, they will incur heavy losses,” the minister said.