Vijayawada: With no financial assistance being released by the Centre for crop damages due to heavy rains last November, the AP government will release nearly Rs 542 crore as input subsidy to the affected farmers soon to help them resume cultivation of crops.
Crops being raised in about 9.26 lakh acres suffered damages due to heavy rainfall and floods in both the rabi and kharif seasons with an estimated production loss of 6.65 lakh metric tonnes.
Officials from the agriculture and horticulture and other departments of AP carried out enumeration and came up with an estimate of damage/loss to the crops.
Central teams for the first time inspected the damaged crops in real-time unlike the earlier practice of arriving after several months following damage to crops and attempting to assess the loss and recommend payment of relief.
The officials followed the norms of State Disaster Response Fund and also the National Disaster Response Fund to enumerate crop damage/loss.
Agriculture officials privy to the development related to release of Central aid, say that the proposals on damage and loss to several crops in various districts in AP due to rainfall and floods and also on input subsidy sent to the Centre for release have been sent back to the state. So far, the Centre has not released any input subsidy to be given to the affected farmers in AP.
In this backdrop, the AP government has taken a decision to release the input subsidy to the tune of Rs 542 crore to the rains-affected farmers shortly to help them take up the cultivation. The state government had already released seeds to the affected farmers at 80 per cent subsidy helping the farmers to raise either the same crop or switch to other crops.
Kadapa, agriculture joint director, J. Murali Krishna said, “Farmers who are raising bengal gram, paddy and others suffered badly in our district. As the affected farmers were given seeds at 80 per cent subsidy, they started the cultivation of crops. We are expecting the release of input subsidy and this will help the farmers to take up spraying pesticide for crops infected with pests and also to harvest the crops by engaging labourers and machinery based on need.”
