Telangana Farmers Are Switching to Oil Palm Cultivation to Get Higher Returns

Oil palm is the newest agricultural buzzword in the district of Adilabad. This crop delivers the farmer a bountiful harvest in exchange for relatively little input. The payoff is assured since there is always a need for goods and services. 

After burning their fingers with conventional crops that are often subject to harsh market fluctuations, farmers in the area are now switching to oil palm in search of higher returns.

Government Support to Farmers

Farmers are being urged by the district government to convert to the new crop. It provides farmers with a supply of saplings as support. For these, the government is growing 1.93 lakh plants in nurseries covering 3,876 acres.

The government authorities want to encourage the farmers to plant oil palms on 1,368 acres. They are getting ready to give out 68,400 plants. To distribute the plants to the farmers who have been recognized for cultivating the oil palm crop, mandalas have been separated into the Both, Talmadugu Indervalli, Gudithanoor, and Narnoor clusters. 

The plants being dispersed have a height of 11 metres and are roughly 11 months old.

Recently, District Collector Sikta Patnaik visited Talmadugu Nursery and discussed with the officials the program on motivating and supplying the plants on time to the farmers in addition to giving them scientific inputs as this is the first time that farmers are experimenting with oil palm. According to District Horticulture Officer G Srinivas Reddy, the nursery is growing plants of the Malaysian species M1 161. He stated, "The Collector examined the soil quality and water availability for the plants in the nursery”.

The oil palm tree is used in industrial agriculture to produce palm oil, a type of edible vegetable oil produced from the mesocarp (reddish pulp) of the oil palm's fruit.

Given that oil palm cultivation is the highest oil yielding perennial crop, with 4-5 MT of palm oil and 0.4–0.5 MT of palm kernel oil (PKO) per Ha, it acquires significance for enhancing the domestic availability of edible oil. Comparatively speaking, the production of palm oil is five times more than the yield of edible oil produced from conventional oilseeds.