Agri summit to focus on cow milk, soil health: Dhankar
CHANDIGARH:The three-day Agrileadership Summit, to be organised at Surajkund in Faridabad district from March 18, will focus on issues pertaining to increasing farmers’ income, soil health, promotion of dairy producing A2 milk (cow milk that contains a particular type of protein), aquaculture and agroindustries, Haryana agriculture minister OP Dhankar said on Saturday.
Addressing mediapersons here, he said the second Agrileadership Summit would have progressive farmers who not only cultivate crops, but have also formed their own brands for their agro products and are engaged in their marketing.
Dhankar said that in milk production, Haryana was next to Gujarat and Punjab, though the state could do even better as the gap was not huge.
He said apart from a modern vegetable mandi, a flower mandi was also being developed in the state.
To a question on organic farming, he referred to the 400 gaushalas (cow pounds) in Haryana and said these could contribute to promotion of organic farming in the state.
To another question, he said the state government was keen to set up a processing unit for horticulture crops and a mandi of frozen products so as to facilitate the sale of agro-products in off-season.
TRADITIONAL FARMING
Meanwhile, according to official information, the government was contemplating an action plan of Rs 303.15 crore for straw management equipment, training and demonstration during 2017-18 to prevent burning of crop residue.
While Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) had initiated the process to set up an ethanol based power plant at Panipat, the state government had a proposal to have paddy straw-based projects of about 50 MW capacity in Karnal, Kurukshetra, Fatehabad, Jind, Kaithal and Ambala.
AGRICULTURAL MARKETING BOARD
Asked why Haryana could not widely market its various agroproducts despite the state having an agricultural market board, Dhankar admitted that it had so far been primarily working only as a mandi board and not as a agricultural marketing board. “There are several issues involved, frequent bureaucratic transfers being one of them. But we would soon be focusing on marketing aspects as well,” he said.