In a bid to provide assured marketing support to the maize farmers under the State’s crop persification 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 persification 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 persification 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 persification 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.