The Maharashtra government is going all out to ensure that there is no shortage of Bt cotton seeds in the state during the kharif season.
Bt cotton is grown over 40 lakh hectares in the state and around 1.60 crore packets have been estimated by the Agriculture Department as the requirement for the coming season, top officials said.
According to Jayant Deshmukh, director, Quality Control & Planning, Agriculture Department, the state is the biggest seller of cotton seed in the country and measures taken by the government has ensured some kind of price control. The prices of Bt cotton seeds today have dropped down to R830 per packet. Earlier, they were available at R1,600 per packet. Each packet is around 450 gm each.
There should be no shortage of the seed this year because of several measures taken by the government in the past three years, Deshmukh said.
The government had banned advance booking of Bt cotton seed since major companies were not supplying the seeds to farmers despite advance bookings.
According to Deshmukh, the companies were aggressive and created propaganda resulting in panic among farmers who ended up paying higher prices for the seed. Now, the distribution control rests with the department, he said.
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