To implement Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel’s vision for agro-based industry, Kondagaon Collector Neelkanth Tikam held a meeting of ground level officials across the district on Tuesday to discuss setting up of Maize Processing Centre (Kokodi) on Tuesday.
Collector, during the meeting, addressing the patwaris, panchayat secretaries and rural agriculture extension officers, said at village Kokodi the Maa Danteshwari Maize Processing Marketing Cooperative Committee is proposed which will establish a processing centre at a cost of Rs 136 crore.
District have around 80,000 farmers out of which 65,000 are producers of maize while around 20,000 farmers produce both maize and paddy.
Benefits of processing unit will go directly to the farmers. The cooperative committee will be in control of the processing centre, which will be set up with farmers' contributory investment as share.
Local farmers will be in its board of directors and dividend will also ve shared among local farmers, he pointed out.
Therefore, it will get a status of industry while the farmers will also have to maintain the production of maize, which will impact their economic status directly.
Under these circumstances, ground level officials have the responsibility to make each farmer shareholder in the committee for which they will have to put extra efforts and continuously review it, he exhorted.
As per the existing plan, with the setting up of processing unit, farmers who are apresent getting Rs 1000 to Rs 1500 for per quintal of maize will get upto Rs 3500 per quintal. It will also generate both direct and indirect employment; the direct jobs will be for 1000 people while around 1 lakh will be involved indirectly.