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More Potatoes To Be Grown In India |
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Potato farm land is set to increase in India as farmers attempt to recover paddy crop losses, driven by the unexpected price rise and delayed monsoons this year.
The Uttar Pradesh horticulture department reports about 527,000 hectares was under potato crop this year, yielding a record 10.8 million metric tonnes of potato production in the state.
The horticulture department expects the acreage to rise to 545,000 hectares this season in the backdrop of bullish prices. The department is also optimistic that per hectare yield will rise from 20.51 tonnes hectare during the last season to 27 tonnes per hectare this season.
The current potato prices in the market are reigning between Rs 1,400 and 1,700 per quintal.
"The farmers will prefer potato since this would fill in their paddy losses without affecting their rabi wheat crop in winters," said Sanjay Katiyar, agriculture scientist at Chandrashekar Azad University.
Almost one-third of agricultural land is lying barren due to the unforeseen failure of monsoons. Farmers are opting for potato as the supplemental crop in place of paddy.
Katiyar also said the trend could again result in windfall production of potato next year, causing severe storage problems as was the scenario last year. Last year, the prices nosedived so much that the cold storage had no space and the crop was forced to lie on roads.
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