Stage set for farmers’ festival in Mahabubnagar

HYDERABAD

The stage is set for the farmers’ festival for three days in Mahabubnagar starting November 28 to celebrate the initiatives launched for them, and achievements made in the last one year since the Congress government took over the reins in December last year.

To be held at the district headquarters, Agriculture and Allied departments are making elaborate arrangements to ensure participation of farmers from different districts. The three-day event will feature programmes to create awareness among farmers on modern agriculture practices, profitable activities and education about different crop varieties.

Model farmers

As many as 25 departments are setting up 150 stalls as part of the event that will involve participation of agricultural scientists, representatives of universities and model farmers from different districts.

The festival plans to explain the initiatives launched by the government in the past one year involving an expenditure of ₹54,280 crore for the welfare and development of farmers. The State had retained its position as the largest in terms of acreage of paddy cultivation in 66.77 lakh acres resulting in 153 lakh metric tonne yield.

The government had implemented crop loan waiver upto ₹2 lakh each crediting ₹17,870 crore into the accounts of 22.22 lakh farmers at one go. Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy had announced recently that the crop loan waiver would continue till all the eligible farmers were covered. In addition, it had reimbursed ₹10,444 crore to power utilities as subsidy towards providing free power supply to the farm sector.

While Rythu Bharosa, farmers’ investment support scheme, was implemented with ₹7,625 crore, government took steps to compensate farmers who lost their crops due to calamities by reviving crop insurance scheme by paying ₹1,300 crore premium to insurance companies. This is in addition to the implementation of insurance scheme for farmers involving payment of ₹5 lakh to families of ryots who died.

Video conference units

Steps were taken to ensure that there was no scope for involvement of middlemen in procurement of foodgrain and the government had credited an amount of ₹10,547 crore into the accounts of farmers within three days of procurement. Video conference units were set up in 2,602 Rythu Vedikas spread over 110 Assembly constituencies enabling farmers to take suggestions from officials and experts.

Agriculture extension officers and horticulture officers were appointed in all the districts to guide farmers in addition to setting up an Agriculture Commission chaired by M. Kodanda Reddy to resolve farmers’ issues.

Published - November 27, 2024 08:40 pm IST