To meet demand,Centre to help grow city veg clusters

The short-term supply shocks of vegetables and horticulture produce like onions and potatoes can be minimised by developing vegetable-producing clusters at the periphery of major urban centres to meet the demands of that particular centre. We are now considering starting a central scheme to assist development of these production centres to meet the demands of all major centres, Agriculture Secretary PK Basu told reporters on Tuesday.

Basu said the ministry had received proposals from Tamil Nadu government for Chennai and Andhra Pradesh government for Hyderabad,seeking central assistance to facilitate developing vegetable and horticulture clusters big enough to meet the demand of both these cities in a sustainable manner.

We are now contemplating to scale it up at the national level. Under this,the state governments can come out with proposals to cover all metros,state capitals and other major cities,say,million-plus population cities, Basu said.

The Centre will provide assistance in terms of development of facilities like grading,marketing and storage infrastructure to help these clusters become sustainable. In fact,the Agriculture Ministry can also offer subsidies,say,like in providing drip irrigation and other such offers based on the proposals received by it.

Basu said that the ministry is now carefully examining the proposals from Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh governments and said that experiences from these can be incorporated in framing guidelines to scale it up for all major cities.

The move can go a long way in eliminating short-term supply shocks for the perishable commodities in major urban centres that fuels further speculation and hoarding by traders and thus compounds the inflationary tendencies at the national level.