As a long-term measure for stabilising the prices of agricultural produce, Karnataka has embarked upon a project to create weather-proof storage facility with a capacity of 10 lakh tonnes so that farmers are not compelled to dispose their produce soon after harvest.
Announcing this at a press conference here, Minister of State for Agriculture Krishna Byregowda, on Wednesday said efforts were on to build five lakh tonnes of storage capacity at a cost of about Rs. 1,700 crore in 18 months under the first phase of the project.
The Nabard-funded project was being taken up jointly by various departments including agriculture and co-operation, he said. Under this project, scientific storage facility for foodgrains would be created at various places in the state.
Lack of proper storage facility was one of the reasons why farmers were forced to sell their produce soon after the harvest even if the prices were low. Creating scientific storage facility would now put the farmers in a situation where they could wait for the prices to pick up while selling their produce, he noted.
Meanwhile, another project of the State government to tackle labour shortage through mechanisation by setting up custom-hiring centres would begin this month itself. About 175 custom-hiring centres would begin operational by this month-end under this project taken up under public-private partnership model, he said.
He said tenders had been called for implementing the scheme of conducting soil analysis of all the farms in the State. The scheme, which envisages to complete the soil testing of all the farms within three years in a bid to decide on the exact requirement of micro and macro soil nutrients to be applied to the soil with a view to help improve productivity by 25 per cent, would be taken up within this financial year, he said.
