Advertising blitz to push potato use

You might soon watch 'eat more potatoes' advertisement in your television set. West Bengal Cold Storage Association is actively thinking to promote potato through a series of generic advertising in different media. The generic advertising of egg and milk was quite successful in recent years.

The president of West Bengal Cold Storage Association (WBCSA), Niranjan Mondal informed that a delegation of WBCSA would soon meet the state minister for agricultural marketing Kamal Guha to discuss the issue.

"Potato is a staple diet like fish, egg and milk. We need to generate awareness among the people about the nutritional value of potato. The association needs the help of the state government on this," he said.

Commenting on the advertising of potato, Guha added that the association is now looking for funds from the state government to run an ad campaign on potato.

"We should get a pie of the funds for generic advertisement," he said. State agricultural marketing minister Kamal Guha also stress the need for generating public awareness about the health aspect of potato.

Guha pointed out that the association and the state government should go hand in hand for development of potato. Incidentally, the annual production of potato in the state is around 80 lakh ton per annum.

However, the combined storage capacity in the cold storages in the state is around 45 lakh ton. WBCSA president sought help from the government to reduce the mismatch by increasing the consumption of potato.

"It is necessary to take effective steps for increasing the consumption of potatoes through value addition in processing units and exploring markets in the South East Asian country for export purpose. We also need refrigerated containers for this," added Mondal.

He also urged that in order to help the units modernise their back dated plant and machinery a development fund should be created by long term repayment period at low rate of interest.