By Punjabnewswire4u
CHANDIGARH, JULY 9
In a bid to provide assured marketing support to the
maize farmers under the State’s crop diversification plan, the Punjab chief
minister Mr. Parkash Singh Badal today announced to set up two cattle feed
processing units at Rs.5 crore each at Nawanshahr and Hoshiarpur to be operated
by the Markfed and Milkfed.
Presiding over a meeting of the chief agriculture officers of the state after
launching the website of agriculture department here at the punjab bhawan this
morning, Mr. Badal said that the state government efforts to boost agriculture
diversification could only fructify with the assured marketing mechanism in place
to benefit the farmers and the setting these two cattle feed plants was a
positive step in this direction. Likewise, to boost the cultivation of
sugarcane as an alternate crop to paddy under this ambitious crop
diversification program, Mr. Badal announced to make a budgetary provision of
at least Rs.100-150 crore in the next annual budget to ensure marketing support
to the cane growers. The chief minister asked the chief agriculture
officers to motivate the farmers through organizing frequent seminars and camps
to adopt alternate crops of maize, cotton, basmati and sugarcane besides
oilseeds like soya bean, conola and hyola as these where not only less water
intensive but also highly remunerative. He also underscored the need to
promote bee-keeping in a big way and asked the financial commissioner
development to depute a dedicated officer not below the rank of joint director
to formulate policies and programs for incentivizing the bee keepers on one
hand and ensure their economic stability on the other. He also asked the
agriculture department to collect and compile the entire data relating to bee
keepers across the state, which were mostly un-organized, in the form of a
directory so as to enable the department to extend all benefits and facilities
to them from time to time. Mr. Badal also desired that the
marketing of honey after proper and scientific processing should be done by the
Markfed which had already a well knit marketing network in the country.
Emphasizing the need to initiate all round steps for popularizing the concept
of harvest mechanization amongst the farmer, Mr. Badal asked the director
agriculture to ensure the supply of latest agricultural equipments and machines
being used in various form operations like happy seeders, raised bed planters,
rotavators, starw choppers and portable maize dryers readily available to the
farmers especially through the agricultural cooperative societies to hire
purchase basis. He also asked the department to ensure adequate number of
community maize dryers to be installed at the strategic locations especially in
the maize producing zones to enable the farmers for fetching remunerative price
of their produce. He instructed the chief agricultural officers
that these dryers must be installed in the designated markets before the
procurement of maize. The chief minister also directed the FCD to
ensure the marketing of maize through the leading cattle and feed manufacturing
companies directly from the farmers. Apart from this he also asked the
agriculture department to find ways and means for value addition of maize in
the PPP mode to ensure better marketing facilities to the maize growers.
Meanwhile, the agriculture commissioner apprised the chief minister that he had
already taken up this issue with the various manufacturers of cattle and feed
based at Khanna, who have assured him of purchasing maize in bulk quantity
directly from farmers. Mr. Badal also asked the agriculture department to
compile a data of all the agro and food processing units across the state so
that the farmers of the state could fetch better remunerative price of their
produce after value addition by these industrial ventures.
Mr. Badal assured the chief agricultural officers that
the state government would extend the scheme of providing best quality
subsidized maize seed to all the remaining districts during the next kharif
season keeping in view the tremendous success of this project already launched
in 10 districts to shift the area under paddy towards maize during
kharif-2013.
The chief minister also asked the FCD to ensure effective delivery of knowledge
down the stream to the farmers by strengthening the network of extension
services so that the farmers could be immensely benefitted from the scientific
farm practices. This should be done in sync with the agriculture
department and the extension service department of PAU in a result-oriented
manner. Mr. Badal also underlined the need to create awareness amongst
the farmers about the latest farm operations and practices through proper
publicity because the lack of knowledge on the part of farmers was a major
obstacle in its implementation.
Highlighting the need to provide best quality seed of sugarcane to the farmers
to enhance its production both qualitatively and quantitatively, the chief
minister asked the sugarcane industry to set up tissue culture labs in their
units to achieve this goal. Mr. Badal also asked the sugar mills to go
far the production of ‘Gur’ and ‘Shakar’ on scientific and hygienic lines as
there was huge demand of these products due to heavy consumption in the
state. He said that gur and shakar could further be marketed across the
country through Markfed. Mr. Badal categorically said that the road side vendors
and manufacturers of gur should be asked to abide by the prescribed quality
standards of the health department. He asked the director agriculture to
tie up with health department to test the samples of gur produced by these
vendors and those flouting quality norms should be dealt with severely, adding
he said that such erring vendors could not be allowed to play havoc with the
health of human beings.
The chief minister was apprised by the FCD that under the agriculture
diversification plan, the department has geared up its activities to enhance
the area of cultivation under cotton and maize from 4.81 and 1.29 lakh hectares
during kharif-2012 to 5.05 and 1.40 lakh hectares during the kharif
2013 and the sowing of maize was underway over an area of 10000 hectares.
Likewise, the area under basmati was also being increased from 4.58 lakh
hectares to 5.50 lakh hectares during the current kharif season.
Prominent amongst others who attended the meeting included chief parliamentary
secretary Mr. GS Babehalli, financial commissioner development Mr. Suresh
Kumar, special principal secretary to chief minister Mr. Gaggandip Singh Brar,
commissioner agriculture Mr. BS Sidhu and director agriculture Mr. Mangal Singh
Sandhu.
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