Centre to grow palm oil trees on 2L-ha in Assam by ’25-26

Guwahati: The Centre has set a target of growing palm oil trees on two lakh hectares of land in Assam by 2025-26, which will bring half of the state’s 35 districts under the profitable edible oil business.
Sources in the state agriculture department told TOI that after the Centre’s approval to set up six oil palm processing mills in the state, process of identifying land to set up three units has begun.
“Oil palm farmers are being selected from across 18 districts, divided into six zones,” said a senior official of the department. The panchayati raj institutions and district agricultural offices have been entrusted with the task of selecting the farmers.
The main apprehension of farmers is extraction of groundwater for watering plants. But palm oil cultivation, which started on a pilot basis in the villages of Goalpara and Kamrup districts covering 2,080 hectares in lower Assam, mostly lack proper irrigation facilities. “The experience in Goalpara and Kamrup has brought to light that rainwater alone sustained palm oil plantations in parts of Assam,” the official added.
Sources said the major source of palm oil production can be the culturable waste or fallow land, which is spread over 6.5 lakh hectares in the state, as per directorate of economics and statistics data.