The State Government has set a target of food grain production of 10.84 lakh metric tonne (MT) for the current rabi season as against 22 lakh MT last year.
This was decided at a high-level meeting chaired by Agriculture Minister Debi Mishra here recently. As per the rabi plan, farm activities will be taken up in 30.95 lakh hectares with an anticipated food grain production of 20.82 lakh tonnes.
Besides targeting production of 13.02 lakh tonnes of paddy, the State Government also set a target of production of 7.80 lakh tonnes of pulses and 6.43 lakh tonnes of oilseeds during the rabi season, said Director of Agriculture and Food Production RS Gopalan.
The department has planned to supply 2.01 lakh quintal of certified seeds including 56,443 quintals of paddy seeds, over 1.21 lakh quintals of groundnut seeds and 2943 quintals of mustard seeds to the farmers for the rabi crops.
The Government is giving maximum thrust on production of pulses and oil seeds as the climatic condition is very conducive.
Since the soil has sufficient moisture due to good rainfall in September, the district agriculture officers have been instructed to encourage the farmers to take the benefit by maximising productivity of rabi crops, official sources said.
Even as the state is facing shortage of fertilisers due to short supply from the Centre, the Government has requested the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers to meet the state demand. The Government has set a target to increase the fertiliser consumption to 5.23 lakh tonnes as against the actual consumption of 3.74 lakh tonne during last rabi season.
It has been decided to grow hybrid maize in 4350 hectares under public private partnership (PPP) while sunflower cultivation will be done over an area of 15,671 hectares under Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY). Target has been made to go for field demonstration of new varieties of pulses over an area of 12,000 hectares under the accelerated pulse production programme (A3P) and community demonstration of oilseeds over and area of 7600 hectares, the sources said.