Telangana government moots district-wise crop diversification

Hyderabad: Telangana government is envisaging the introduction of an extensive crop diversification programme in a scientific manner with a view to increasing the income of State farmers and also to help them to export surplus produce. The State government has engaged scientific community and agriculture experts to suggest district-wise crop diversification plan so as to ensure maximum benefits to the farmers, said B Vinod Kumar, Vice Chairman, Telangana State Planning Board.

Vinod Kumar said this while participating at a national workshop in Hyderabad titled 'Bridging Gap to create a democratic Global Value chain: Export Potential of Agricultural Commodities of Telangana', organised jointly by Telangana State Planning Board, Centre for Good Governance (CGG) and Confederation of NGOs of Rural India (CNRI) and supported by leading agrochemical company Dhanuka Agritech Ltd.

The workshop assumes significance as it was organised in the backdrop of continued surplus production of the food grains in the State year after year. It mentioned that foodgrain production in Telangana has gone up by three times in comparison to production seven years ago and warrants government's focused interventions to ensure timely off-take of produce so that farmers can derive maximum benefit from their produce. In this workshop the farm experts underlined the need to create a system and process for traceability and bringing Block chain technology to the farmland.

"Some kind of regulated farming system is inevitable in the interest of hard-working farmers and farming system of the Telangana. There is an urgent need to create the plan with a defined deadline in consultation with scientists, technocrats and commodity experts" said Prof Devi Prasad, Director, Centre for Good Governance, who has been instrumental in creating the draft agriculture policy of Telangana with a mandate given by the Government of Telangana.