Mysuru: The Tobacco Board’s 143rd meeting, held at Bengaluru on Apr. 17,  was presided by T. Venkatesh, lAS, Chairman and Executive Director, Tobacco Board.  

Gokaraju Gangaraju, MP and Member, Tobacco Board and other Members N. Ramesh, Director, Export Promotion (Agri) Div., Ministry of Commerce & Industry, New Delhi, Dr. D. Damodar Reddy, Director (CTRI), Rajahmundry, attended the meeting.

Farmers’ representatives Balineni Seethaiah, G. Satyanarayana, Kiran Kumar and P.V.Basavarajappa; Trade Representative Krishna Kumar Misra; B. B. Choudhury, IOFS, Director (Auctions), Tobacco Board, Bengaluru; C. S. S. Patnaik, Secretary, Tobacco Board and other officials also attended the meeting.

The main agenda of the Board meeting was fixation of  crop size for 2017-18 Karnataka crop season.

The Board, after taking into consideration the requests of the growers and grower representatives, indents given by the manufacturers and exporters through ITA, past export and domestic performance, global supply and demand position, uncertainty about purchases of Philip Morris International, a major customer for Karnataka tobacco, Board’s mandate to ensure fair and remunerative prices had resolved to fix the crop size at 99 million kg for 2017-18 crop season in Karnataka.

While determining the crop size, the Board also noted that the small farmers of tobacco have no other alternative crop which fetched decent returns as FCV tobacco in the last successive drought years and in the interest of the growers considered 4% increase in the crop size during 2017-18.

The Board also resolved to limit the horizontal expansion of tobacco and instructed that no new barns shall be allowed to be constructed.

Following the decision of the Government of India, the Board also decided not to allow shifting of barns during 2017-18 Karnataka crop season.

As the tobacco transplantations are fast approaching and the fertiliser deliveries are to be made to growers starting from 1st week of May 2017, the Board resolved to commence the registration process for 2017-18 Karnataka from the last week of April 2017 while authorising the Chairman to issue the criteria and guidelines for registration or renewal of registration on the similar lines of last year.

P. V. Basavarajappa, the grower member of the Board from Periyapatna Region of Karnataka, was elected as the Vice-Chairman of the Tobacco Board for one year, according to a press release.