With paddy sowing set to begin in Punjab, CM Bhagwant Mann declared that to encourage crop diversification, his government will provide minimum support price ,MSP) on alternative crops such as maize, pulses and bajra.
Saying that it will be the government’s responsibility to sell such crops further, he added: “We may sell it to Singapore or Ukraine or any other place, but you will get MSP.”
He again underlined his government’s decision to offer financial assistance of Rs 1,500 per acre to farmers sowing paddy through the DSR technique to check depleting groundwater table.
Mann, who visited his native village, Satoj urged farmers there to adopt DSR.
“To promote the DSR technology, our government has also decided to provide financial assistance of Rs 1,500 per acre to the farmers who adopt this water saving method of cultivating paddy,” he said.
Under the DSR technique, paddy seeds are drilled into the ground with the help of a machine that does seeding of rice and spraying of herbicide simultaneously.
According to the traditional method, first young paddy plants are raised by farmers in nurseries and then these plants are uprooted and transplanted in a puddled field.
The CM also assured the farmers that during the tenure of their government, they will be getting superior quality of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.
On the power situation in the state, he said his government is going to resume mining of coal from Punjab’s allotted mine in Jharkhand which has been shut since 2015.
Mann pointed out that with uninterrupted supply of coal, there will be normal supply of power for the agriculture, the domestic and the industrial sectors.
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