The minister said that the census of farmers was done twice in the year 2005-06 and 2010-11 since 2004. As per these two censuses, the number marginal farmers reduced by 2, 37, 515, medium farmers population reduced by 2, 11,709 and large farmers population reduced by 8,534.
Maharathy said that Odisha has barren land of 8.49 lakh hectares in 2012-13, 7.56 lakh hectares in 2013-14 and 7.22 lakh hectares in 2014-15. For last five years around 2.29 lakh hectares of land was not cultivated. In the current fiscal year, Odisha has total 61.80 lakh hectares of cultivated land, out of which only 33.35 lakh hectares are being irrigated during Kharif cultivation and 16.57 lakh hectares of land are being irrigated during Rabi Crop cultivation.