The agricultural sector in Telangana faces an interesting challenge. After the bifurcation, the State could bring over 18 lakh acres of land under irrigation as it built the Kaleshwaram project. This has helped the farmers to grow 30 million tonnes (mt) of paddy last year.

But this has resulted in farmers moving away from pulses, which used to be grown well in the State. A report on pulses prepared by the Federation of Telangana Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FTCCI) has captured the trend where the farmers are shifting to water-intensive crops such as paddy and cotton, shunning pulses.

Decline in growth

The area under pulses in Telangana declined to 5.05 lakh hectares (lh) in 2018-19 as against 7.69 lh in 2005-06.

In order to address this, the report Pulses - Opportunities and Way Forward’ State Government should tap fallow lands to grow pulses, besides going for a realistic minimum support price reflecting the market prices.

The State has about 17 lh of fallow land, constituting 15 per cent of geographical area. “The Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices called for conversion of rice fallow land for pulses production to facilitate better income for farmers that also improves the soil fertility by nitrogen fixation,” it said.

“There is a need to develop Contract Farming System between farmers and food processing industries to create consistent demand for pulses,” the report said.

Need to incentivise

Stating that the public procurement system and assured MSP are encouraging farmers to grow paddy, farmers need to be incentivised to make them grow pulses. “A high cost of cultivation is discouraging farmers to grow pulse crops. There is no machinery available for harvesting the pulse crops to reduce labour costs,” it pointed out.

“Absence of timely availability of inputs and credit for working capital needs have further causing higher costs of cultivation. The lower and fluctuating prices have left farmers with low margins,” the report said. It also wanted the Telangana Government to encourage Farmer Producer Organisations (FPO) to set up processing units and daal mills.

Poor productivity levels

The report observes that the challenges were not confined to farmers in Telangana alone. “The country has experienced fluctuations in the area as well as stagnation in the yields of the pulses,” it said.

“This is the reason why despite accounting for 34 per cent of area under pulses and 20 per cent share of production, the country could not made a mark. The yields remain stagnant at 649 kg a hectare, which is far lower than the top producers in the world,” it said. The value of imports of pulses peaked in the financial year 2016-17 at ₹28,520 crore and subsequently declined to ₹10,221 crore in 2019-20.

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