Additional Chief Secretary and Agriculture Production Commissioner Ajay Singh presided over a meeting of all the district collectors and agriculture department officials through video conferencing from Mantralaya on Thursday.
In the meeting, he reviewed the progress of storage and uploading of fertilisers and seeds for kharif crops, soil health card scheme and Prime Minister Crop Insurance Scheme.
Singh said that as per the forecast of Meteorological Department, timely monsoon arrival is expected in State. Keeping in view the chances of normal rainfall, he directed the field officials of agriculture department to upload and transport fertilisers and seeds as soon as possible.
He gave instructions to the District Collectors to review the storage and uploading of fertilisers and seeds on daily basis.
Additional Chief Secretary instructed officials concerned to ensure storage of fertilisers and seeds in remote areas of Sarguja and Bastar Division, before the arrival of monsoon.
In the meeting, he said under Prime Minister Crop Insurance Scheme, amount of insurance claim has been transferred to respective banks for the eligible beneficiary farmers in kharif 2016.
Instructions have been given to transfer this amount of insurance claim to accounts of farmers concerned within a week. With five per cent increase in kharif 2016, total 37 per cent farmers have got associated with the scheme.
This year the department has set the target to cover nearly 50 per cent of the farmers. He gave instructions to District Collectors to promote the scheme gram panchayat-level through camps and personally interact with farmers to bring them under the cover of this scheme.
It was informed in the meeting that under soil health card scheme, this year target of collecting 4.50 lakh soil samples has been set, 60 per cent of which has to be collected before sowing of kharif crops ie before June 15 and examination of these samples has to be done by end of monsoon season.
The video conference was attended by Principal Secretary Revenue and Calamity Management Renu Pillai, Secretary Agriculture Anup Shrivastava, Secretary Cooperative DD Singh, Director Agriculture MS Kerketta, Managing Director Seed Corporation Alok Awasthi, Registrar Cooperative Societies JP Pathak and other officials.