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The Centre has set a production target of 163.15 million tonnes (mt) during kharif season of 2022-23 crop year (July-June) and assured that there will not be any problem of availability of fertilisers when the sowing begins from June with the arrival of south-west monsoon.
The foodgrains target for next year includes 112 tonnes of rice, 40.60 mt of nutri/coarse cereals and 10.55 mt of pulses. Besides, the government also aims for producing 26.89 mt of oilsseds. The country is estimated to have produced record 153.54 mt, exceeding the target of 150.58 mt in 2021-22 on the back of a favourable monsoon with good spatial distribution across the country.
Addressing the annual kharif conference on Tuesday, Agriculture Commissioner AK Singh said the government has kept a target keeping in mind its aim to replace old rice varieties with the latest ones in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which can help increase the production of rice, currently at record 128 mt (kharif and rabi).
More production of oilseeds is possible if yield gaps are addressed, he said, and asked Karnataka to increase the area under sunflower, which has declined to 2.26 lakh hectare in 2020-21 from 26.68 lakh hectare in 1993-94.
‘No shortage of fertilisers’
On the fertilisers front, Fertiliser Secretary RK Chaturvedi said, “We have made both short and long-term arrangements with global suppliers for import of fertilisers. There will not be any shortage of fertilisers during the kharif season.”
The fertiliser availability has been pegged at 485.59 lt, including 104.72 lt of imported fertiliser and 254.79 lt of domestically manufactured soil nutrients, over and above the requirement of 354.34 lt, he said. Availability of urea is estimated to be at 256.22 lt in kharif season, higher than the requirement of 179 lt while availability of Di-Ammonium Phosphate (DAP) is likely to be 81.42 lt, against the requirement of 58.82 lt.
In the case of Muriate of Potash (MoP), for which India is fully dependent on imports, the secretary said availability would be 29.03 lt against the need for 19.81 lt. Chaturvedi did not clarify how that could be possible as the country had imported less last fiscal and prices are already very high.
The availability of NPK fertiliser is pegged at 77.87 lt over 63.71 lt requirement, while the availability of Single Superphosphate (SSP) is estimated at 41 lt against 33 lt that is required, Chaturvedi added.
According to Chaturvedi, the country is estimated to import about 104.72 lt of fertilisers—which includes 40 lt of urea, 29 lt of DAP, 23.18 lt of MoP and 13.22 lt of SSP—to meet the demand during the upcoming kharif season.
A long-term agreement has been signed with Oman India Fertiliser Company SAOC (OMIFCO) for the import of 10 lt of urea every year for three years. A monthly supply of 90,000 tonnes has started from February, he said.
In his address, Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar asked State governments to chalk out strategies to boost seed production and reduce farmers’ dependency on private players.
Tomar said States have a bigger role in curbing the sale of fake seeds and pesticides, which he felt is key to further boost agri-exports, which touched $50 billion in 2021-22 fiscal.
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