Bhubaneswar: Launching the Khariff campaign for the year 2019, the Odisha government has set a food grain production of 10 million tonnes. The food grain production is expected to be 100.41 lakh tonnes from atotal coverage area of 50.79 lakh hectares.
The state is expecting the paddy coverage area would be 36.50 lakh hectates and the rice production would be 85.52 lakh tonnes.
While the total cereal production will be 94.79 lakh tonnes from a coverage area of 40.92 lakh hectares, the pulses production would be 5.61 lakh tonnes from a coverage area of 9.85 lakh hectares.
Vegetable productions would be 42 lakh tonnes and production of spices like chillies, termeric and ginger is expected to be 4.70 lakh tonnes.
Launching the Khariff-2019 campaign, the state agriculture minister Arun Sahoo said that the strategy is to increase the seed replacement and introduction of ultra-modern farming practices. Stating that there is an emphasis on diversification of crop, he said that higher targets of production of pulses (5.62 lakh tonnes) and oil seeds( 3.55 lakh tonnes) have been given to substitute crops from paddy to Arhar, green gram, black gram, groundnut or sesamum.
The Agriculture Production Commission, Gagan Dhal, agriculture principal secretary, Sourabh Garg, agriculture director M. Muthukumar, horticulture director BK Upadhya, and soil conservation director Hemant Panda also addressed the workshop organised to sensitize the agriculture officials and field staff.
