Karimnagar is the new rice bowl of State

KARIMNAGAR: Karimnagar district is all set emerge as the ‘rice bowl' of Andhra Pradesh with an expected record paddy production of over 12.60 lakh metric tones during this rabi season.
Thanks to the bountiful rainfall from 2006, paddy production has been increasing considerably. During the 2006-07 rabi season, paddy was cultivated in 1.43 lakh hectares and the production was 9.01 lakh metric tones.
In 2007-08 rabi season, the production was 9.5 lakh tonnes in 1.7 lakh hectares.
In 2008-09, 1.95 lakh hectares were brought under cultivation and the yield was around 12.5 lakh tonnes. However, there was a fall in the yield during the 2010 rabi season due to drought.
The Agricultural Department are expecting a bumper harvest of over 12.60 lakh MT paddy during the current 2010-11 rabi season as the paddy was cultivated in 2.12 lakh hectares against the normal area of 1.38 lakh hectares during the rabi season. Thanks to the bountiful rainfall and increase in the ground water table, the area of paddy cultivation had increased considerably in the district making it the rice bowl of State.
About 50 per cent of area of paddy was cultivated in Sri Ram Sagar project command area and the remaining under 3.5 lakh agricultural pumpset connections in the district. The agricultural authorities attributed increase in paddy production due to good drainage system in the district fields compared to the East and West Godavari districts, where the water is logged for a longer time.
In Karimnagar, the paddy fields have good drainage system where water is aerated easily, thus yielding record harvest of around 35 to 40 bags of rice per acre, the authorities said.

With the onset of harvest season, the paddy harvesters are busy doing roaring business in the district. The harvesters are charging anywhere from Rs. 1500 to Rs. 2,000 per hour. Sensing possible threat due to unseasonal rains and hailstorms, the farmers are forced to shell out huge amount for harvesting their paddy produce.

Harvesters in great demand in W.G.

The HIndu 5/5/11

ELURU: The harvesters are in great demand in the paddy-rich West Godavari district as rabi operations peaked, thanks to the acute shortage of manpower. The machines on hire in different sizes are rolling into paddy fields from far-off places such as Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Telangana region. Combined harvesters which are used for harvesting, threshing, winnowing, and even packing at times have become most sought after.
The labour problem has been worrying farmers for quite some time. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has reportedly worsened the situation with the district witnessing a reverse migration with settlers finding employment in their native villages in north coastal Andhra under the scheme. The demand-supply mismatch on the labour front has resulted in an increase of wage component in agriculture manifold.
According to Yerneni Nagendranath of the Andhra Pradesh Rytanga Samakhya, the district administration is not able to cope with the demand for harvesters. The administration had arranged bank finance to the ryot clubs for purchase of 45 harvesters under the Centrally-sponsored Rastriya Krushi Vikas Yojana (RKY) scheme in the previous financial year at the rate of one per mandal. The demand was so great that each village should have at least one harvester for smooth agricultural operations, he said.
200 harvesters
Medikonda Ramesh of Unguturu said not less than 200 harvesters were seen undertaking agricultural operations in Unguturu mandal alone in the current season. He harvested the crop in seven out of his 15 acres manually by paying Rs. 5,700 per acre in phase I. But the machines engaged in the rest of the fields in the next phase brought down the cost to Rs. 2,000, says Mr. Ramesh.
Complaints
He highlighted the need to ensure that the harvesters imported from China and Japan suited local conditions. The complaint is that the harvesters get bogged down in the water-logged and marshy delta fields and the grains harvested by machines are prone to having higher moisture levels. He called for change in the designs of the harvesters to address these problems. If the machine can undertake harvesting operations in one acre within an hour, at least 4-6 workers were required to take up the same amount of work, he said.

Mechanisation helps sugar mills tackle rising cane harvest costs

Hindu Business Line - 21/4/11

Runaway increase in labour cost for sugarcane harvest has hit growth of area for the crop in Tamil Nadu. Mechanisation is emerging the only long term option, say sugar millers.

Labour for harvest that was around Rs 375-400 a tonne at the start of the season has increased to about Rs 550 and even Rs 600 in some places. This is about a third of the sugarcane price that farmers get, making it unattractive to them. In addition to the cost, the shortage of labour aggravates the problem.

During the current season, the State Government has fixed the price for sugarcane at Rs 2,000 a tonne, including transport charge, linked to a sugar recovery of 9.5 per cent. This is nearly twice the price paid in 2006-07 when the State Advised Price was Rs 1,034 a tonne, linked to 9 per cent sugar recovery. Labour was around Rs 100 then, according to industry figures.

The increase in labour costs has eroded the benefit of higher sugarcane price. Leading sugar mills are looking at mechanisation of harvesting as a solution.

Thiru Arooran Sugars has inducted about 30 harvesting machines in the last few years across its four mills. It now has 22 in operation, and is adding eight more during the current season, said Mr Ram V. Tygarajan, Chairman and Managing Director, Thiru Arooran Sugars. “Without mechanisation, there is no future for sugarcane,” he says.

Tamil Nadu's peak sugarcane output of about 258 lakh tonnes in 2006-07 is not likely to be repeated in the near future. Mills are struggling to get to 160 lakh tonnes.

Sakthi Sugars, among the earliest to mechanise, has 10 machines in operation and is considering more. Nearly half the harvesting at one of its mills has been mechanised, according to its Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, Mr Manickam.

Mechanised harvesting costs around Rs 300-400 a tonne, in addition to the advantage of assured availability. But for now, due to the high costs of machines individual service providers cannot offer harvesting services, as they do for paddy cultivation which is almost completely mechanised. Typically, a set of sugarcane-harvesting machines, including the cutting machine and accompanying loaders, can cost up to Rs 1.25 crore-1.5 crore, he says.

Challenge

Mr Tyagarajan says companies face the challenge of investing ahead of cane availability, as that is the only option to increase cane areas now. This year's planting will be dependent on the harvesting capacity of sugar mills. Increasingly, farmers, too, are accepting the idea of mechanised harvesting, and are changing the cultivation practice to enable mechanisation.

The mills are now working on increasing efficiency and output of the harvesters, which are new to the field conditions here, he says.

According to industry sources, one machine does the job of about 60-65 workers. A pair of workers can cut up to 1.5 tonnes of sugarcane a day, while a machine cuts 150 tonnes in 12 hours. But the machines are capable of cutting up to 400 tonnes. As is the norm for mechanisation, large blocks of land and level conditions are ideal, but that is often not the case. Mills charge around Rs 350 a tonne, while the actual cost could work out much higher. But costs could be controlled with increasing efficiency. In a cutting season lasting about 160 days, the machines should cut about 40,000 tonnes, but now the operators are managing about one-fourth of that capacity.

Sales of complex fertilisers soar thanks to new subsidy regime

The Hindu Business Line dt.21.4.2011

 

New Delhi, April 20: 

Sales of complex fertilisers have registered a 20 per cent jump in 2010-11, following the introduction of a nutrient-based subsidy (NBS) regime.

The fiscal that ended on March 31 saw fertiliser firms selling 98.3 lakh tonnes (lt) of complexes, containing various proportions of nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P), potash (K) and sulphur (S). This was roughly a fifth more than the 81.9 lt they did in 2009-10.

On the other hand, despatches of conventional fertilisers such as urea and di-ammonium phosphate (DAP) recorded lower growth – 6.7 per cent and 9.3 per cent respectively – while even falling by 16.8 per cent in the case of muriate of potash (MOP).

The spurt in complex sales is largely being ascribed to the NBS, effective since April 1, 2010. Under it, subsidy is provided on fertilisers based on their N, P, K or S content. This was as against the earlier system, where the subsidy was limited to specific products (urea, DAP, MOP) with no real linkage to nutrient content.

Value proposition

The NBS subsidy is currently Rs 27.481 for a kg of N, with these at Rs 29.407 on P, Rs 24.628 on K and Rs 1.692 on S. That translates into a subsidy of Rs 16,648 on a tonne of the popular NPK complex, 12:32:16, enabling it to be retailed at around Rs 9,500. Lower prices (against Rs 10,750 for DAP) and the presence of K (unlike in DAP, which only has 18 per cent N and 46 per cent P) makes it a value proposition for farmers.

“Not only farmers, even companies are finding attractive to market complexes because their prices can be raised quietly without inviting the attention that DAP or MOP would,” an industry source noted.

The Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative (Iffco) – the leading player in complexes along with Coromandel International Ltd – has virtually stopped making DAP at its Kandla plant, which is now only producing 10:26:26 and 12:32:16 complexes. Even MOP is being increasingly incorporated into complexes, as evidenced by imports that have gone up despite the dip in direct sales.

The other indicator of the increasing preference for complexes is imports, which touched a record 11.7 lt in 2010-11. The importers included Indian Potash Ltd (7.38 lt), Iffco (1.32 lt), Zuari Industries (0.77 lt), Mangalore Chemicals & Fertilisers (0.31 lt) and Rashtriya Chemicals & Fertilisers (0.30 lt), besides the likes of Nagarjuna Fertilisers that do not manufacture complexes.

According to the source, complex sales would have easily scaled the 100 lt-mark, but for the political upheavals in North Africa and West Asia.

“The disruption in supply of rock phosphate, phosphoric acid, ammonia and sulphur from these countries impacted our production. Moreover, the cost of these raw materials, too, went up,” he added.

As a result, the year-on-year sales growth for complexes, which amounted to over 29 per cent during April-January, slowed down to 20 per cent by the fiscal-end.

DAP price increase?

Meanwhile, most companies are said to have effected, or are planning to, increase retail prices of DAP by around Rs 600 a tonne for the coming kharif planting season. The maximum retail price, excluding local levies, will go up from Rs 10,750 to Rs 11,350 a tonne. In addition, firms are passing on the one per cent excise duty levied in the recent Union Budget to the farmer.

ETV News on Rythu Pragati, Guntur

Rythu Pragati, Guntur

The first edition of Rythu Pragati was held in Guntur from 6 to 9 March 2011.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJGgtPwCim4

Hi-tech holds promise for small landholders

Economic Times - 25 January

Stanford Engineer’s Novel Drip Irrigation Product Benefits Farming Community Across States

Omkar Sapre PUNE

ARSAJUL Mani from Hubli in north Karnataka experimented with a new irrigation equipment, which to his delight halved his effort and the quanta of water needed while doubling the output from his two-acre farm.
    Mani, a small landholder, could not afford costly and complex traditional irrigation systems. What won him over was a drip irrigation innovation from a Stanford graduate — and produced out of a startup at Palo Alto — which is designed for small farms like his apart from being three to four times cheaper than normal systems. And to boot, it worked without electricity.
    A mechanical engineer from Stanford, Peter Frykman, stumbled upon the idea of using a lowcost plastic tubing assembly that uses gravity to deliver water to the plant’s roots. He refined the idea at his California socio-commercial start-up and called his product, Driptech.
    “Water and labour shortages result in hard toil for small farmers across the world,” Frykman says. “Traditional irrigation control systems are costly and complex for them. They resort to flood irrigation which wastes a lot of water. Small farms need cheap, low-maintenance, drip irrigation systems to reduce effort and use of water, which is what Driptech does.” Driptech comprises a low-cost laser-punched plastic tubing linked to a water tank. Gravity drives water through the tubing and to the plant’s root from these holes. Simple tap valves control the flow of water and the farmer can even install, and maintain it, all by himself.
    While a traditional drip irrigation system costs Rs 40,000 an acre, Driptech costs a modest Rs 10,000, not to talk of reliability and easy maintenance. The low cost is because Frykman’s proprietary production technology can use the same machines that make plastic carry bags for the Driptech tubing.
    “That is where innovation is,” he says. “There are thousands of such machines across cities. This enables low-cost, speedy, distributed production. We can deploy production facilities directly where the product is being sold, which also enables customisation.” Traditional drip irrigation systems are made in specialised factories and need skilled technicians to install and maintain them.
    Frykman’s insights came from a visit to drought-hit Ethiopia as part of his course. "It was the worst drought Ethiopia had experienced in 20 years. Farmers had no means to grow crops with the meagre water available. The drip irrigation products that were locally available were too expensive for most farmers and seldom worked properly," he said.
    After incorporating the firm as a for-profit social enterprise in the United States — in which Postini founder Scott Perry invested $40,000 — Driptech’s team travelled to rural India for a five-month pilot with 15 farmers who were unable to afford drip irrigation. Following this, Driptech raised another round of funding, recruited people, established relationships with partners and began scaling up the business.
    He is touring India and China to market the product vigorously having signed on the Usha Martin group in Jharkhand, Husk Power Systems in Bihar and the Godrej group in four districts of Maharashtra and Karnataka, to hawk his system.
    Frykman says he sees a huge potential in India for his innovation, and not without reason. Government data says 86% farmers here have landholding of less than two hectares.
    Accentuating the problem and increasing the business potential, is falling average landholding — from 1.67 hectares in 1982 to 1.34 hectares during 1992 to 1.06 hectares in 2002. And income-wise, most small farmers are worse off than the lowestpaid government employee with an average monthly income between Rs 1,500 and Rs 8,300, according to the Confederation of the Indian Farmers Association (Cifa).

Driptech in action (left and right) and engineer-innovator Peter Frykman (centre), the product’s creator