With an aim to bring out farmers of Punjab from the vicious circle of wheat and paddy, Punjab State Farmers’ Commission has targeted to persuade at least 10,000 farmers this year to cultivate vegetables to generate more income.
“Last year, on the initiation of the commission, about 300 farmers cultivated vegetables and all of them earned minimum income of Rs 1 lakh per annum from the crop,” chairman of the commission, G S Kalkat, told reporters, revealing that this year the target had been put to persuade at least 10,000 farmers for vegetable cultivation.
The commission provides farmers with the appropriate training to build their own green house, which costs about Rs one lakh per green house built on the specification of the commission.
For constructing a green house, the Government has offered a subsidy of Rs 40,000, which could be doubled in case of constructing on two ‘kanals’ of land
He said as they were promoting cultivation of vegetables, at the same time they were also working to encourage building up of cold chain and cold storage capabilities. He was here in the city to address a seminar organised by Markfed in collaboration with CII to explore the avenues for the sold storage development.
Meanwhile, he said that as Punjab was getting supply of banana of worth Rs 400-500 crore, there was great scope for its cultivation in Punjab with proper type of sapling with which a farmer could get income of Rs one lakh per acre.
He said that 250 farmers had already applied for getting the saplings of banana, which were being developed with special technique and this year they had got saplings for 160 acres.
He said that they were targeting to bring 20,000-25,000 acre land under banana cultivation. While one ripening centre (crucial for banana) has already been developed at Malerkotla by a private company, Punjab Mandi Board was developing three at Ludhiana , Jalandhar and Patiala .
He said that all these endeavours were crucial to discourage area under paddy due to which underground water was depleting very fast.
