Hyderabad: Chief Minister Kalvakuntla Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) on Monday made key announcements with respect to the agriculture sector. CM KCR made the announcements on the key decisions taken at a high-level review meeting he held with ministers and top officials of Agriculture, Marketing, and Civil Supplies Departments.

Noticing that the cotton produced in Telangana State (TS) had a better price in the international market, KCR urged farmers in Telangana to cultivate more cotton this monsoon season.

"The cotton produced in the state has better quality and has a higher price as well as higher yield, in the coming monsoon season, the farmers should be ready to grow cotton in 75 to 80 lakh acres," said KCR.

KCR asked Principal Secretary of Agriculture in the State, Janardhan Reddy to make necessary arrangements for the procurement of the required amount of seeds for cultivation during this monsoon.

In a similar way, arrangements will also be made to cultivate red gram in 20 to 25 lakh acres of agricultural land in Telangana State this monsoon. The Telangana chief minister said that if cotton and red gram crops were given proper water periodically, the cultivated yield would be more.

KCR also directed Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar to identify lands to be given on lease to the Central Warehousing Corporation that are ready to construct additional warehouses to store the additional food grains.

Talking about the importance of water this summer, KCR also instructed the Water Resources Department Officials to ensure that the required water is supplied to lands under irrigation projects for another 10 days to ensure that crops don’t dry up.

“Farmers from Suryapet district are complaining that tail-end lands are not getting water. Officials should ensure that water is supplied to tail-end lands. Not even a single acre should dry up due to lack of water,” he said.

Ministers Niranjan Reddy, E Dayakar Rao, Satyavathi Rathod, Civil Supplies Corporation Chairman Mareddy Srinivas Reddy, Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar, CM Principal Secretary S Narsing Rao, Secretary Bhoopal Reddy, Principal Secretary (Finance) Ramakrishna Rao, Principal Secretary (Agriculture) Janardhan Reddy, Civil Supplies Commissioner Anil Kumar, FCI General Manager Ashwini Gupta, and others participated in the meeting.

KCR has also taken another key decision regarding the cultivation of Paddy this summer in the State. Similar to last year, even this year, the Telangana government will procure paddy from farmers directly by setting up more procurement centres in the villages.

This announcement was taken as paddy was cultivated in 52.76 lakh acre in the State this summer season, the yield is expected to touch 1.17 crore metric tonne of coarse variety paddy and 21 lakh metric tonne of fine variety paddy.