Govt sets foodgrain production target at 298 million tonnes for 2020-21 crop year

The Union Agriculture Ministry on Thursday asked the States to plan for a total foodgrain production of 298 million tonnes (mt) for the crop year 2020-21, increasing mainly the output of pulses and coarse cereals.

The targets were given to State Agriculture Ministers and officials who participated in the national kharif conference organised by the Ministry through video-conferencing.

New targets

While the target for rice and wheat for the coming year remains more or less same as 2019-20’s estimated production of 117.47 mt and 106.21 mt respectively, the targets for coarse cereals and pulses go up by nearly 3.5 mt and 2.5 mt, respectively, to 48.7 mt and 25.6 mt, said Agriculture Commissioner SK Malhotra at the conference, which was chaired by Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar.

Similarly, targets for oilseeds and cotton, too, were kept relatively higher at 36.64 mt (as against the production estimate of 34.19 mt this year) and 36 million bales (one bale is 170 kg) as against 34.89 million bales in 2019-20.

As regards the availability of seeds, India has sufficient stock of seeds for most of the crops, barring soyabean, Malhotra said in his presentation.

While India needs 27.23 quintals of soya seeds for the 2020 kharif season, the available quantity is around 24.03 lakh quintals, he said.

The Ministry also estimated the requirement of urea for the forthcoming kharif season.

While the need of urea would go up to 166.88 lakh tonnes (lt) from the total sales of 155.73 lt in the last kharif season, the requirement of DAP would be 51.61 lt (50.17 lt), MOP 20.22 lt (15.81 lt), NPK 52.95 lt (50.88 lt) and SSP of 26.42 lt (22.10 lt).

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