Marketing agriculture produces is going to become easy and a profitable exercise as a more pragmatic approach to widen reach of farmers and provide them access to all agriculture markets of the country is on the cards. The Central Government would be launching a common platform — Rashtriya Krishi Mandi — in January that will link all the agriculture markets in the long run and would provide market related inputs to farmers with just a click.
The Central Government aims to connect around 200 markets initially with the platform that would gradually bring other markets within its setup. Addressing a gathering on the occasion of World Soil Day at Birsa Agriculture University, Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh castigated the usual practice of leaving price of a commodity at the mercy of few licensees of the market and expressed the need to deviate from the custom dominated by a select few.
“We have decided that there should be one market in the country. We decided to give Rs20-lakh, IT and computer for computerisation of markets. Some states have done this and some would do this by December. Initially, around 200 markets would be linked with it, however, our target is to connect 585 markets with it,” said Singh.
Singh added that the idea rooted into the concept of national market is to give a farmer an idea about the prevailing market price of his produce which until now is what is being communicated to them by the middlemen and other vested interests. The Union Minister emphasised the need to adopt uniform tagging practices across all the markets to define the quality of agriculture produces brought to the place and helping a farmer in obtaining trade prices of the tagged produce.
“let there be an entry point to check the soil moisture in a produce, provide a facility of tagging and let its price get displayed on a board. A licensee in the market should be able to trade the commodity in any market,” maintained the Minister.
The Union Minister also distributed ‘soil health cards’ among farmers which provide insights about the quality of soil thus suggest the remedial measures need to be taken for agricultural activities. He also released a book --Status and Management of Soil health. Minister, Department of , Department of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry & Cooperation, Randhir Kumar Singh, Ranchi MP Ram Tahal Chaudhary, Kanke MlA Jeetu Charan Ram, Mandar MlA Gangotri Kujur, Principal Secretary, Agriculture, NM Kulkarni, Vice Chancellor of BAU, George John and senior officials of the department of Agriculture graced the occasion.
Speaking on “World Soil Day”, Randhir Kumar Singh said 48,000 soil samples would be tested and soil health cards would be provided to farmers by March, 2016 and about 50 percent of the target has already been achieved. The Minister also expressed the vision of the State government for dairy development in Jharkhand.
“A milk processing plant of one lakh litre capacity would be dedicated to the people of the state in Hotwar, Ranchi in February next,” he said, adding that Jharkhand will become a fish exporting state in 2017-18.
Welcoming the guests, Kulkarni said as against the national average of 130 kg NPK application per hectare, only 60 kg was being used in Jharkhand which needs improvement. “A soil health card will help the farmers to decide which fertilizer to use when and in what quantity,” he added.