Dairy Livestock

India running shortage of green, dry fodder by 23.4% says minster Rupala

India running shortage of green, dry fodder by 23.4% says minster Rupala

India running shortage of green, dry fodder by 23.4% says minster Rupala

According to the Union Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry, and Dairy, the country is short on dry fodder by 23.4%.

In a reply to the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, Parshottam Rupala said that the Indian Grassland and Fodder Research Institute (IGFRI), Jhansi, has estimated that the country is short of green fodder by 11.24 percent, dry fodder by 23.4%, and concentrates by 28.9%.

He said that the shortage was caused by things like changes in how land is used, the growth of cities, the decreasing productivity of pastures, the use of land for commercial crops, and the lack of quality fodder seed, among other things.

Related Agri News |Punjab to supply its extra paddy straw to Kerala for animal fodder

On October 6, the Secretary of the Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairy led a meeting with the State governments and other important people to talk about the country’s fodder situation. Even though the States said there was no fear of a crisis, the price of fodder went up, which may be a sign of the general trend of inflation.

He said that the government is working on developing feed and fodder in the country as part of the National Livestock Mission. Under this, money is given to help make seeds of high-yielding fodder varieties, which promotes fodder crops as cash crops and makes more land available for fodder crops.

He also said that the fodder resource plans made for 20 states by the IGFRI in Jhansi under the supervision of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) have been given to the states so that they can be put into action.

Insurance coverage for crops

In response to a question about crop insurance in the country, Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Narendra Singh Tomar said that the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) has been in place since the 2016 kharif season.

He said that 37.63 billion applications have been sent in for the scheme and that from 2016-17 to 2021-22, claims totaling  ₹1,28,522.30 billion have been paid.

Concerning the crop insurance complaints, he said that the State government or the Joint Committee made up of officials from the State government and the insurance companies are doing all the major work related to figuring out what claims are valid. In this kind of situation, insurance companies don’t have much to do with figuring out the loss on their own.

During the PMFBY’s implementation, however, there have been some complaints against insurance companies about not paying claims or paying them late, underpaying claims because banks sent insurance proposals late or not at all, discrepancies in yield data that led to disputes between the State government and insurance companies, delays in giving the State government its share of the funds, insurance companies not sending enough staff, etc. He said that the State governments, the insurers, and the ministry dealt with most of these complaints in a good way.

Conventional mono cropping

In response to another question, he said that farmers have not lost the wheat and rice seeds that their ancestors once owned because they only grow hybrids.

Related Agri News | Cattle dung is more valuable than the fodder consumed by cattle: NSO report

Traditional varieties don’t produce as much and take longer to grow. They are also taller. This has made it hard for farmers to grow crops in large areas. But most of the land is used to grow wheat and rice from traditional seeds that have been changed to be better.

He said that the National Gene Bank at the ICAR-National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources in New Delhi has been used to save traditional and other types of crops.

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