JEYPORE: The hard work of ragi farmers in Koraput district has borne fruit as the Food Corporation of India (FCI) flagged off its first-ever consignment of the millet to neighbouring Andhra Pradesh for public distribution system (PDS) purposes from Jeypore railway station on Tuesday night.
The consignment of 26,000 quintal of ragi was sent to Andhra Pradesh’s Kurnool district through train. “It is for the first time that we sent ragi to Andhra Pradesh. More such consignments will be supplied to non-ragi producing states soon,” said manager of FCI Jeypore Pushpendra Singh.
FCI officials said more rakes of ragi will soon be dispatched to Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and northeastern states.
Sources said the tribal development cooperative corporation procured 2,39,875 quintal of ragi from 14,574 farmers between January and April this year. The procurement was carried out at 69 ragi collection centres under large area multipurpose societies (LAMPS) across Koraput district with farmers receiving Rs 4,500 per quintal under the Odisha Millet Mission.
A high-level state committee comprising representatives from the Agriculture and ST & SC Development departments besides FCI decided to store the procured ragi in facilities of the Central Warehousing Corporation across Koraput, Malkangiri and Nabarangpur districts. The stock will be supplied to non-ragi producing states through FCI for PDS purposes. As per plan, around 1.68 lakh quintal of ragi will be exported to other states, said the sources.
“Production of ragi in Koraput district has doubled from four quintal to eight quintal per acre due to adoption of modern farm technologies and timely government support. Farmers are now able to sell surplus ragi to government agencies after retaining enough for their own consumption. With such trends, ragi exports from the district will continue to grow,” said Prasanta Parida, a scientist at MS Swaminathan Research Foundation in Jeypore.
Notably, ragi is cultivated over nearly 1.97 lakh hectare of land in Koraput every year, using 20-22 different varieties of seeds.