November 27, 2012

A high level delegation of the company led by Vice President, Global Vegetables and Asia Commercial, Consuelo E Madere recently called on the chief minister.

During the deliberations, D Narain CEO Monsanto's India Region apprised the chief minister that the company had developed heat tolerant hybrid corn varieties for the northern region especially Punjab adding that the company had focused to develop corn varieties for the kharif season in order to provide a viable alternative to paddy in the state. He also assured Badal that company would also make all out efforts to develop high yielding soy seeds in its endeavour to boost diversification of agriculture in the state.

Assuring all possible assistance to the company, the Chief Minister directed the Vice Chancellor (VC) Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) to provide technical data and logistic support to enable them to produce quality hybrid seeds best suited to the climatic conditions of the state.

Badal also constituted a high level committee headed by the chairman of Punjab Farmers Commission Dr GS Kalkat with Financial Commissioner Development (FCD) GS Sandhu, advisor to agriculture Balwinder Singh Sidhu and director agriculture Mangal Singh Sandhu as members to work out the modalities for developing high yielding varieties and corn seed in tandem with the Monsanto Company besides in aiding them to set up research cum seed testing centre at the earliest.

The Committee has also been mandated to suggest self-sustaining marketing mechanism to ensure hassle free marketing of corn to the farmers. The Punjab government has planned to reduce the shift area under paddy from 28 to 16 lakh hectares in a phased manner over a period of six years.