The Chhattisgarh Government has sent a proposal to the Central Government for setting up an ‘Organic Farming Research Centre’ in the State.

Presently, Chhattisgarh State Regional Organic Farming Research Centre is working under Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh), but as the agro-climatic condition of the State is different, Chhattisgarh has demanded from Central Government,  Chhattisgarh's own Research Centre, Agriculture Minister Brijmohan Agrawal informed.

This apart, during the ongoing Rabi season, farmers have collected nearly 10.96 lakh packets of organic fertilizers for various crops, he said.

Chhattisgarh State Agriculture and Seed Development Corporation supplies organic fertilizers as per the demand of farmers, Agrawal said. He said that organic farming has become need of the hour. The farmers are also becoming more and more aware about the benefits of this method of cultivation.

Under the leadership of Chief Minister Raman Singh, the State Government has launched Organic Farming Mission to promote organic farming in Chhattisgarh, he said.

This Mission is being conducted in all 27 districts of the state, under which nearly 3,854 hectares of land has been earmarked for organic farming. State-level organic farming cell and district level organic farming cells have been set up for success of the mission.

Farmers have been provided organic seeds to develop seven government agricultural cells as model organic cells. On August 31 last year, Chief Minister Raman Singh had directed officials to draw an action plan for operating a State-level ‘Food Processing Mission’  in the State.

Chairing a meeting of the State Industry Department at the office at his residence in Raipur,  the Chief Minister said that as per the recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission, the State would run the  ‘Food Processing Mission’  while using its own resources.

He said that the State government has made a provision of Rs 12 crore for launching the State-level ‘Food Processing Mission’. Singh said that the launching of Mission would help farmers get better prices for their farm produce and also open new job avenues for youth in the Food Processing sector.

Officials attending the meeting said that Food Processing Sector in Chhattisgarh is being seen as a ‘focus sector’ to ensure industrial diversity. The Chhattisgarh government will also now promote use of solar photo voltaic power plants in cold storages in a bid to conserve huge quantum of energy consumed by such facilities in the State, officials stated. The project is to be implemented by Chhattisgarh Renewable Energy Development Agency (CREDA), officials stated.

The solar power plant having 50 Kw minimum capacity would be installed in a cold storage in the State meant for storing fruits, vegetables and flowers.

The cold storage would also be connected to a ‘remote monitoring’ mechanism and the data would be viewable in a desktop or even smart phones.

In April last year, the Chhattisgarh government had announced that an Agro Mall will be developed at Raipur Agriculture Produce Market .

Notably, Chhattisgarh is among only 13 states in the country which had notified the rules to implement the provisions of Agricultural Produce Marketing Regulation (APMR) Act to facilitate contract farming in the State, officials stated.

The other states which had notified the rules are --Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan and Telangana) have notified the rules to implement the provision, officials stated.

Chhattisgarh – the rice bowl of India is heading towards producing a sizeable basket of vegetables and fruits.

As per the official data available, the State produced 56.98 lakh metric tonnes of vegetables during 2014-15 which was five per cent more than previous year.

Similarly, 21.55 lakh metric tonnes of fruits were cultivated in Chhattiagarh during 2014-15 which was 10 per cent more than the previous year.

In this context, the cold chain capacity created by the Union Ministry of Food Processing Industries in Chhattisgarh stood at 8500 metric tonnes (MT) till April 2015, officials stated.

In a power point presentation on Prospects of Cold Chain Infrastructure in Eastern Region on April 6, 2015,  the Ministry has spelled out its plans of taking up a total of 500 Integrated Cold Chain projects as per the modified pattern of the Central assistance during the next five years across the country to create capacity of 2.5 million tonnes .

The core objective of the projects is to make the scheme of cold chain value addition and preservation infrastructure open ended, it stated.