Punjab CM asks planning board to come up with crop diversification model

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Tuesday asked the state planning board to come up with a model to encourage farmers to shift from traditional wheat and paddy to less water consuming crops.

In a review meeting of various schemes of the Agriculture Department, the CM expressed concern over the fast depleting groundwater table and underlined the need to prioritise less water consuming crops, beginning with maize, cotton and sugarcane.

He asked the board to come up with a strategy to persuade farmers to shift to these crops from the traditional wheat and paddy.

Singh also directed the board to set up a centralised data analysis and monitoring division for collation of all data related to the various agricultural schemes in the state.

This would help in ensuring quality policy and decision making, besides ensuring concurrent monitoring and end-of-project evaluation of all government welfare schemes, a statement quoting Singh said.

Stressing on the need to evolve a futuristic marketing strategy for agri produce, the chief minister sought suggestions on the same so as to enable setting up of a common digital platform to ensure remunerative price for farm produce.

Chairman of the state farmers commission Ajay Vir Jakhar underlined the need to give more power to Markfed and Punjab Agro to push marketing of fresh vegetable produce.