Haryana to introduce seed bill: Minister

Haryana Agriculture Minister O.P. Dhankar on Thursday said that a seed bill will be introduced for the first time in the next session of the state Assembly.

Dhankar has instructed his department's officials to prepare a seed bill on the suggestions given by experts in the second session of the two-day seminar held in Gurugram's Haryana Institute of Public Administration (HIPA).

He said that the draft of this Act should include all species of seeds related to the Agriculture and Horticulture Department, besides full details of pesticides and insecticides management.

Dhankar also directed the officers of the Horticulture Department to set up labs for testing horticultural seeds in all the districts of the state.

He instructed the officials to establish a modern lab with the facility of checking genetic seeds at the Chaudhary Charan Singh Agricultural University in Hisar.

He said that he will also establish a state of the art test lab with the help of Iowa State University.

Considering the improvement of agriculture and horticulture, the Agriculture Minister said that Haryana farmers have a huge market in the National Capital Region and farmers of the entire state can benefit from it.

He said that different groups will be formed under the leadership of experts for brainstorming on the challenges. He added that 16 different groups on water management, soil health, organic farming, crop management, risk management, innovation and land management would be set up.

In the seminar, Ambala's leading young farmer Puneet Singh suggested that young farmers need to know the art of selling their produce in the state.

Learning how to sell products in the market from countries such as in Africa, he has been producing and selling 70 products since the past one and a half years.

Farmer Shrikishan Kaushik said that water in their area is saline. If sweet water or irrigation facilities can be made available in the area, then production can increase manifold and farmers' income can more than double.

Maan Singh Yadav of Farukhnagar suggested that farmers should get support from the government to fence their fields, so that they can protect their crops from stray animals.

Kurukshetra's Deputy Agricultural Director Kamchand suggested that there should be a date-wise programme for crop procurement in all mandis (markets) which will save the farmers' time and prevent mandis from being crowded.

--IANS

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