Hike in demand: Bengal urges farmers to grow more veggies

KOLKATA: With the increase in demand for vegetables especially cauliflower, brinjal, and potato, the Bengal agriculture department has urged farmers to cultivate more vegetables.

A meeting was held last week where it was decided that there is a need to cultivate more vegetables apart from paddy as there is a need for home-grown vegetables in Bengal.

Senior officials of the Bengal government said that it was decided that the state wants to increase home-grown production of vegetables and reduce import of vegetables. This will help them to reduce their dependency on other states.

Bengal has emerged as the top state in the country in vegetable production in 2018-19, according to horticulture production data released by the Central government recently. The state witnessed the production of 29.55 million tonnes of vegetables during 2018-19 which was the maximum in the

Bengal witnessed the production of 29.55 MT of vegetables during 2018-19, the highest in the nation

country in that period, statewise horticulture production data said.

Uttar Pradesh was in second place with 27.71 million tonnes of vegetable production in the same period, it said.

In 2017-18, West Bengal was in second place with 27.70 MT of vegetable production while UP held the top position with a production of 28.32 MT.

A senior official of the state agriculture department said: “We are convincing the farmers to shift their base to cultivate more vegetables as there is a huge market for it and we have also decided to provide them with the option to procure hitech machinery.”