Madhya Pradesh will soon be able to meet the demand of organic seeds in country. It has chalked out Organic Seed Production Programme, which will be implemented on eight farms owned by Department of Agriculture and two owned by MP Seeds Development Corporation.
Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan while reviewing the plans of Department of Agriculture, at Mantralaya here on Friday gave instructions to open regional offices of Madhya Pradesh State Organic Seed Certification Institute. It will facilitate the organic farmers to get their organic products certified. The meeting was informed that so far more than 26,000 farmers have registered themselves as organic farmers. Their details including, village, land holding, produces, manures used by them, etc will be available online for interested trading organisations.
It is worth noticing that Madhya Pradesh has witnessed tremendous growth in farm sector in last two decades. Production of major crops, particularly wheat, soybean, maize, paddy has increased significantly. Sesame cultivation has also shown upward trend. Foodgrain output has been a record. Horticulture area has increased five times. The acreage was 4.69 lakh hectares in 2005-06 while it is 15.18 lakh hectares today.
Madhya Pradesh has also surpassed other States in production of certified seeds. The economic progress in farming community can be measured by sale of tractors, which was 22,000 in 2004-05. Today, the sale has touched 87,000 figure, which is almost four times more. Agricultural growth rate has increased to nearly 25 per cent.
The Chief Minister stressed on phasing out conventional methods of farming and gradually adopting modern farming systems. The farmers, he said, must think of cultivating cash crops such as pulses.