Monsoon arrives ahead of schedule

The Southwest monsoon that feeds large part of farm land in the state has finally stepped inside the state boundary, ahead of its scheduled arrival in third week of June.

The met office confirmed the onset of monsoon late Saturday evening in southern parts of the state and has predicted increase in rainfall in next two to three days.

"Light to moderate rain or thundershower may occur at a few places over the districts of Odisha. Outlook for next two days would be increase in rainfall," the local weather office said on its website.

The agromet advisory service of the Indian Meteorological Department has already asked the farmers to begin sowing to take the advantage of normal monsoon.

Last week, the state agriculture and food production department had set a food grain production target of 10.1 million tonne in the kharif season of 2013. The tentative production target includes 8.73 million tonne of rice, 0.675 million tonne maize, 0.162 million tonne ragi, 0.141 million tonne arhar, 0.14 million tonne moong and 0.152 million tonne urad.The agriculture department has targeted that area of rice, maize and ragi along with other cereals would top 4.23 million hectares of cultivable land with the productivity of 2,268 kg per hectare. Similarly the coverage area of the pulses that include arhar, moong and urad is set at 0.89 million hectares with productivity at 565 kg per hectare.

For optimum utilisation of surface and ground water resources, the government plans to set up 37,009 private irrigation projects across the state. The Agriculture Department also targets to disburse crop loan of Rs 6,000 crore to farmers through cooperative societies during 2013-14 at two per cent interest rate.

Out of 80 lakh ha total arable land of the state, only a third of the area has irrigation facility while the rest area depend upon the monsoon rains to grow food grains and vegetables.