Potato Plan Unveiled Bhubaneswar : 30/ January/2014 The State Government, taking a cue from the crisis emerging out of the shortage of Potatoes and Onions in 2013, has prepared a five-year road map for increasing production to arrest dependence on other States for the two major crops. Chief Secretary JK Mohapatra, unveiling the road map from 2014-15 to 2018-19, at a meeting held at the Secretariat here today, advised the officials concerned to monitor the existing capacities of cold storages in the State, step up cultivation and production of potato and onion as per the needs of consumers and providing marketing assistance and funding to farmers at the appropriate time. Principal Secretary Agriculture Rajesh Verma, Secretary of Cooperation, Bishnupada Sethi, Director Horticulture Sanjiv Chadha, Managing Director APICOL Om Kar, experts from Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology and other senior officials participated in the discussion. It is revealed that while the State needs 9.72 lakh metric tonne of potato per annum, the present rate of production is a meagre 2.01 lakh MT. Potato cultivation is being done in 14,000 hectares of land and mostly it is cultivated during Kharif season. The road map prepared has planned to step up cultivation of potato from 14,000 to 60,000 hectares of land in five years including introduction of this cultivation during Kharif season. The target has been set to hike the production to 10 lakh MT by the end of 2018-19. Another major constraint the meeting discussed is lower rate of productivity of potatoes in Odisha. While the all India productivity rate is 22.67 MT per hectare, in Odisha it is 14.22 MT per hectare. Similarly, availability of seeds is another major concern of potato farmers. It was decided in the meeting to provide breeder and foundation seeds to farmers. State Seeds Corporation would be asked to produce potato seeds and distribute among farmers. Besides, firm input would also be supplied to farmers. Besides, the meeting also addressed the crisis of pathetic conditions of existing cold storages and decided to modernise them with funding by the State government resources. In the five year road map, 130 cold storages each having 5,000 metric tonnes capacity would be developed. Besides, contract farming would be incentivised, sources said. It is, however, surprising that Odisha is surplus in onion production if the statistics given during the meeting is any indication. It was revealed that while the consumption of onion in the State is 2.26 lakh metric tonnes per annum, the production figure is 4.19 lakh MT per annum. Onion cultivation in the State is done during Rabi season in districts like Bolangir, Kalahandi, Sonepur, Bargarh, Boudh, Anugul, Nuapada and Keonjhar. The road map has planned to step up cultivation from the existing 34,750 hectares to 1 lakh hectares by 2018-19. One of major constraints for the onion cultivation is availability of seeds. The State Government is all set to initiate step to provide onion seeds to farmers. Besides, storage space of 3.45 lakh MT would be created at farmers’ level, the meeting decided.
Posted on: Sat, 01 Feb 2014 05:07:36 +0000
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