High yielding seeds needed: LOUSAL
Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, June 12 2021: The Loumee Shinmee Apun Lup (LOUSAL) has urged the State Government to make high yielding paddy seeds and fertilizers available to the farmers at a controlled rate and to adopt a Minimum Support Price (MSP) suitable to the State from time to time .

A press release issued by LOUSAL said that the paddy seeds distributed to farmers by the departments concerned is very limited.

The lup noted that the amount of paddy seeds produced by Central Agriculture University (CAU), Imphal for plantation in a year is just 7 to 8 metric tons while the requirement is 11,400 metric tons.

Of this 7 to 8 MT of seeds, some are reserved as shares for other North East States, it added.

Making the high yielding seeds variety of Manipur available to the farmers is crucial, LOUSAL said and continued that Manipur can stop relying for food from other States if the departments can provide at least 50 per cent of seeds required (5,700 MT approx.) to the farmers, improve irrigation facility to promote double cropping and strictly check shrinkage of paddy fields.

According to LOUSAL, the arable land area of Manipur is about 1.9 lakh hectare.

Saying that usage of fertilizer is crucial to increase farm outputs, the lup maintained that Super, DAP, Potash and Urea are some of the fertilizers popular in Manipur.

Unfortunately, these fertilizers are not available to the farmers at a rate fixed by the Government, LOUSAL claimed.

According to LOUSAL, the price of the fertilizers are as follows - Super (Rs 800 per bag); DAP (Rs 2000-2300 per bag); Urea (Rs 700-750) and Potash (Rs 1200 per bag) .

It further said that growing paddies in a land measuring 1 sangam cost around Rs 16,000-16,500 .

LOUSAL also urged the State Government to probe whether the urea related issues which crop up from time to time in the State has connection with poppy plantation in the State.

If the Government neglects this, its ambitious programme War on Drugs will not bear fruits, it reasoned.

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