KHAMMAM: Union Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh said here on Tuesday that though India benefited considerably from Bt cotton, a sizeable segment of growers still prefer the non-Bt varieties.
Talking to mediapersons after interacting with a number of cotton farmers at Punukula village where the non-pesticidal management of agriculture was successfully tried, he said that dry land cultivation of Bt cotton involved higher risk and this was the reason why States such as Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra could not catch up with the pace of farmers in Gujarat, Punjab and Haryana.
Gujarat model
Indicating the need for going faster in irrigation in these States, he said even Andhra Pradesh, with a major part of its cotton area being dry land, could not do it as in the State of Gujarat, which in fact, accounted for almost 30 per cent of India’s cotton production today as against 18 per cent five years ago. The Bt area accounted for nearly 90 per cent in Khammam district of Andhra Pradesh where over 90,000 hectares was under cotton this season. He said that at least half of the chilli area in AP should be brought under the non-pesticidal management in the next five years. He said that a 100 acre-spices park would come up in Guntur.
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