The State Government has decided to adopt an organic farming policy to provide support for growth in the organic agriculture sector and marketing of organic products.
The State Agriculture Cabinet Committee, which met under chairmanship of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik here Saturday, took a decision to adopt the policy in two months’ time.
After the meeting, Agriculture & Farmers’ Empowerment Minister Dr Damodar Rout reporters that some areas in the State use a very low quantum of chemical fertilisers and the proposed policy would help the farming community to undertake organic farming on those lands. He said, as per the Fourth Advance Estimates 2016-17, that there has been an all time record production of 98.74 lakh metric tonnes of rice in the State. As an agriculture produce importing State, Odisha stands the third largest contributor to the Public Distribution System with its productivity surpassing the all India average.
Rout claimed that the State’s fishery sector has witnessed a remarkable progress with fish production increasing from 2.59 lakh MT in 2000 to 5.21 lakh MT in 2015-16 and 6.08 lakh MT in 2016-17.
The Cabinet too decided to introduce a mobile advisory service system called, “Krushi Paramarsha” to provide necessary information to the farmers for improving their income from agriculture.
He said procurement system for crops like pulses and oilseeds would be put up from the next procurement season under the Minimum Support Price (MSP) scheme as production of these crops has increased.
The meeting was attended by Agriculture Production Commissioner Gagan Kumar Dhal, Water Resources Principal Secretary Pradeep Kumar Jena and Agriculture and Cooperation and Principal Secretary Manoj Ahuja, among others.
Secretary Jena said said Odisha is achieving high growth in the irrigation sector.
“The State Government is committed to create additional irrigation potential of 10 lakh hectares by 2018-19 while additional irrigation potential of 4.63 lakh hectares was created by the end of 2016-17,” he said.
In order to achieve the target, it has been set to create irrigation potential for 7.26 lakh hectare in 2017-18.
He said while two major projects, Upper Indravati Extension and Titilagarh, have been completed, four projects, lower Indra, Ret, Telengiri and Rukura, would be completed in 2017-18, which will provide irrigation to 34,000 hectares. Eight other major and medium projects would be completed in 2018-19.
Similarly, 55 out of 213 ongoing Minor Irrigation Projects (MIP) have been completed and the rest 158 would be completed by 2018-19, he said.