By IANS,
Bhubaneswar : Orissa’s rice output is likely surge this year even though a drought and untimely rains destroyed paddy crops worth millions of rupees, Agriculture Minister Damodar Rout said Monday.
“We still hope to cross our annual target because we have a bumper crop in major paddy growing areas,” Rout told IANS.
This year, the state expects to produce 63.88 lakh tonnes of rice on about 36.50 lakh hectares, against last year’s production of 62.93 lakh tonnes on 41 lakh hectares.
Although the production loss due to the recent rains and drought would be worth millions of rupees, “we still hope to produce more rice compared to what we produced last year”, Rout said.
The overall rainfall in Orissa, one of the country’s major rice growing states, was normal during the monsoon season this year, but the government said that over 10,000 of the state’s 51,551 villages faced a drought with a crop loss of about 50 percent as they did not get adequate showers on time.
Also, most parts of the state saw widespread rains from Dec 6-9 due to which winter paddy crops stored in the fields were damaged.
The state government has asked authorities of all districts to assess the damages and submit reports by Dec 15.
Farmers staged demonstrations in different places of the state Saturday and Sunday demanding compensation for the loss they suffered due to rains.
Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, who visited at least four affected districts of Gajapati, Ganjam, Bolangir and Subarnapur Sunday and made an assessment of the losses, said his government will announce a package for the affected farmers after receiving the report from the districts.
The opposition Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have alleged that the state government was not serious about the plight of farmers.
But Rout said the rains had caused extensive damage only in two southern districts of Ganjam and Gajapati and the farmers who incurred losses would be compensated.
He added that crop loss occurred in some places mainly due to delayed harvesting.
Orissa contributes about one-tenth of the country’s rice output. The state has about four million hectares under paddy cultivation. Over 62 percent of its cropped area is rain-fed.
The primary crops that depend on rain in the state are paddy, oilseeds, pulses, millet, and cotton. Rout said that other than paddy, no other crops have been affected by the drought or rains.