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Chandigarh, March 30 (). Describing crop diversification as a vital need for the state, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Thursday called upon farmers to switch to alternative crops like cotton, basmati and moong.
In a video message to the farmers, he said that many crops used to be grown on the fertile land, but gradually the farmers confined themselves to paddy.
This has adversely affected the topography of the state in terms of excessive power consumption, depletion of water table as most of the blocks had moved to extremely dark areas, pollution due to stubble burning and others, he added.
Mann said that to deal with this, there is a need to adopt alternative crops, a high level committee headed by the Chief Secretary has also recommended the adoption of these crops.
He said that the state government is adopting it on a large scale. He guaranteed to provide canal water for cotton crop from April 1 and 33 per cent on Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) certified cotton seed besides providing insurance on cotton crop and minimum support price (MSP) on basmati. announced subsidy.
Expressing concern over the various threats posed by paddy, Mann said the government’s firm belief in increasing the area under cotton cultivation would check the problem.
He said that preventive measures are also being taken to check the attack of white fly and pink bollworm.
Recommending the cultivation of PR 126 and other similar varieties of paddy, he said that special emphasis is being laid on promoting PAU certified varieties and discouraging water-intensive varieties like Pusa 44, which take considerable time to harvest. Are.
Mann said that the MSP on moong will continue but recent researches have shown that whitefly problem arises on its crop. He advised farmers not to cultivate moong in Mansa, Bathinda, Muktsar Sahib and Fazilka districts.
SGK/ANM
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