Principal Secretary Agriculture Production & Farmers Welfare, Navin Kumar Choudhary today said that production of food crops like Potato, Maize and Wheat matching quality parameters of big food chains and food processing units should be promoted for better marketing and high returns to the farmers.
He said this during his visit to the field of progressive potato grower, Basant Singh Sani at Arnia who has grown 25 acre of Lady Rosetta variety of Potato used in making of Potato Chips.
Principal Secretary, while addressing farmers at Arnia, outlined that purpose of such efforts is to encourage the farmers to produce raw material of international standards meeting the requirements of big food chains. He informed that Potato L R variety is crispy, suger free and high yielding best suited to meet the raw material needs of Jammu based Potato chips industry. This is a win win situation in which farmers will get better returns of their produce and industrialists will get cheaper raw material as earlier required potatoes were being procured from outside the UT, he added.
He further maintained that Department is committed to establish Farm Machinery Bank for full mechanization of Potato cultivation so that during next season more than 400 acre of land can be covered under L R Variety of Potato.
He also emphasised to complete the registration of all basmati growers at the earliest so as to create a data bank for scientific planning towards better production and export of basmati. Moreover, he stressed on organic cultivation of vegetables and impressed upon the concerned to provide every support for exporting the agri produce outside UT.
While inspecting the Potato Seed Production Farm, KotaliMianFateh spread over 19 acre, he instructed the concerned officers to go for plantation of fruit plants on the boundary line of the farm. He fixed the target of 1000 acre of potato cultivation in clusters during next year.
He also inaugurated Departmental Facilitation Centre cum Sale Counter at Government Fruit Plant Nursery of Horticulture Department at Maralia.