Making huge strides towards its ambitious crop diversification plan, the Punjab Government on Tuesday took a slew of decisions to encourage farmers to opt for alternative crops by assuring effective marketing mechanism, suitable infrastructure support, conducting awareness campaigns, among other things.
The decisions were taken during a meeting of the chief agriculture officers (CAOs) of the State with Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, after launching the website of State Agriculture department.
Two-cattle feed units
To provide assured marketing support to maize farmers under the crop diversification plan, Badal announced to set up two cattle feed processing units, costing Rs 5 crore each at Nawanshahr and Hoshiarpur to be operated by the Markfed and Milkfed.
“The State Government efforts to boost agriculture diversification could only fructify with assured marketing mechanism in place to benefit farmers and setting these two cattle feed plants is a positive step in this direction,” he added.
In addition, Badal also asked the State 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.
Badal further asked the department to ensure adequate number of community maize dryers to be installed at strategic locations especially in maize producing zones to enable the farmers for fetching remunerative price of their produce.
Rs150 cr for cane growers
In a bid to boost sugarcane cultivation as an alternate crop to paddy under diversification program, the Chief Minister also 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. 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.
Sugar mills to produce gur
Badal also asked the sugar mills to go for the production of ‘gur’ and ‘shakkar’ on scientific and hygienic lines as there was huge demand of these products due to heavy consumption in the state.
“Gur and shakkar could further be marketed across the country through Markfed,” he added. Badal categorically said that the roadside vendors and manufacturers of gur should be asked to abide by prescribed quality standards of the health department.
He asked the director agriculture to tie up with health department to test samples of gur produced by these vendors and those flouting quality norms should be dealt with severely.
Motivation to farmers
Chief Minister has also asked the Chief Agriculture Officers to motivate the farmers through organising frequent seminars and camps to adopt alternate crops like maize, cotton, basmati, and sugarcane besides oilseeds like soya bean, conola and hyola as these were not only less water intensive but also highly remunerative.
Bee-keeping top priority
Underscoring the need to promote bee-keeping in a big way, Badal asked the FCD to depute a dedicated officer, not below the rank of joint director, to formulate policies and programs for incentivising the bee-keepers on one hand, and ensure their economic stability on the other.
He also asked the agriculture department to collect and compile entire data relating to bee keepers across the state, which were mostly unorganised, in the form of a directory so as to enable the department to extend all benefits and facilities to them from time to time.
Popularise farm
Emphasising the need to initiate all round steps for popularising the concept of harvest mechanisation among the farmers, Badal asked the Director Agriculture to ensure the supply of latest agricultural equipments and machines being used in various farm operations like happy seeders, raised bed planters, rotavators, straw choppers and portable maize dryers readily available to the farmers especially through the agricultural cooperative societies to hire purchase basis. Chief Minister asked the FCD to ensure effective delivery of knowledge down the stream to the farmers by strengthening extension services network so that farmers could be immensely benefited from the scientific farm practices.
“It should be properly done in sync with the agriculture department and the extension service department of ludhiana’s Punjab Agriculture University (PAU) in a result-oriented manner,” said Badal. He also underlined the need to create awareness amongst the farmers about the latest farm operations and practices through proper publicity as the lack of knowledge on the part of farmers was a major obstacle in its implementation.