By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 23 Sep: Agriculture and Horticulture Minister Subodh Uniyal held a review meeting of the Management Committee of the Uttarakhand Horticulture Council at his office in Vidhan Bhawan, here, today. The minister said that, keeping in view the potential in the horticulture sector of the state, an action plan ought to be prepared to provide infrastructure facilities to the cultivators.
Along with this, he said that the biggest problem of farmers was the undue influence of the middlemen. He directed the officials to make sincere efforts to eliminate middlemen and thus ensure fair prices for the horticulture produce. For this, special efforts would have to be made by the Horticulture Marketing Board. Special efforts would be needed to procure products like mushroom, honey, apples and other fruit crops, so that farmers could get better prices. This would only be possible by providing improved marketing infrastructure for the horticulturists.
Approval had been given to register the Uttarakhand Horticulture Council under the Societies Act. Instructions were given by the minister to the officials to prepare rules for this at the earliest. In order to give a wider platform to Uttarakhand products, discussions were held on organising an International Horticultural Produce Fair.
Present on this occasion were Secretary R Meenakshi Sundaram, Additional Secretary Ram Vilas Yadav, Director, Industries, Sudhir Chandra Nautiyal, Director, Horticulture & Food Processing, Harvinder Singh Baweja, Deputy Director SK Singh, Deputy Director Mahendra Pal Singh, and other officers including Sanjay Srivastava.
