The Congress has asked the Telangana government to step up efforts to procure paddy and maize to help farmers tide over the crisis.

“The government has promised that it would open 7,500 procurement centres to purchase the whole of rabi produce. But it opened only 4,380 procurement centres,” he said.

He alleged that the farmers were facing challenges as procurement was not happening at full scale.

“The government needs to ramp up paddy procurement at a much higher level. In the absence of the government’s paddy procurement centres, farmers are forced to sell their produce to private rice millers at lesser prices,” Sravan Dasoju, the All-India Congress Committee spokesman, has said.

“The farming community has been the worst hit due to the lockdown and needs urgent attention from the government,” he said in a letter written to the Telangana Chief Minister, K Chandrashekar Rao.

“Though the government of Telangana, reportedly, is making efforts to take up procurement of agriculture produce to the point of saturation, the situation at ground level has been different,” he said.

As against the normal rabi sowing area of 31.58 lakh acres, the farmers grew crops in 53.68 lakh acres, showing a growth of 70 per cent in the area.

While paddy was grown in 39.24 lakh acres (as against normal area of 16.89 lakh acres), maize was grown in 6.21 lakh acres and bengal gram 3.28 lakh acres, leading to a substantial increase in the agricultural produce.

The AICC spokesperson also said that there is a shortage of gunny bags, making it difficult for farmers to sell the produce.

He said the situation with regard to maize procurement, too, needs to be improved.

The State produced about 18.60 lakh tonnes of maize. “But the government could procure only 1.30 lakh tonnes only,” he said.

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