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Sanjay Jog
Mumbai, Nov 7: The Mumbai Exhibition Centre at Goregaon in north Mumbai wore a festive look on Saturday with over 40,000 farmers from all over Maharashtra participating in the Agro Food Tech' 98 international exposition organised by the state government.
State chief minister Manohar Joshi inaugurated the exposition termed the four-day state-sponsored meet Agro Advantage Maharashtra, as a historic meet of farmers and investors. Joshi was accompanied by the deputy chief minister Gopinath Munde, state agriculture minister Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil, cooperation minister Jaiprakash Mundada, horticulture minister Shobhatai Phadanvis, minister of state for agriculture Harshvardhan Patil and state chief secretary P Subrahmaniam. In all, 309 stalls comprising 67 multinational companies displayed a wide range of agro-related services available for farmers. Companies from HollaNd, Germany, Israel and Netherland have also put up stalls. The exhibition will remain open till November 10.
Joshi said the state governmentwill lay emphasis on profitability of the agriculture sector apart from increasing productivity. The state government's new agriculture policy gives importance to water management, timely supply of seeds, pesticides and fertilisers and encourage research. Also the policy will announce the findings of the research, ease procedures of land deals, create basic infrastructure for sale and import of the agriculture produce.
The inauguration was followed by four separate technical sessions on finance for agriculture and related activities, horticulture and fruit processing and bio technology, marketing and cold chain and co-generation of power.
State agriculture secretary Umeshchandra Sarangi said that in all 101 projects with an investment of Rs 5,500 crore have been offered to the investors attending the four-day Agro Advantage Maharashtra Global Investor Convention. He informed that so far detailed project reports worth Rs 2 lakh were purchased by these investors.
Sarangi said that a project worth $700million for the setting up of market intelligence system by private or public sector companies has been offered in the convention. The objective was to develop a networking of market for the benefit of farmers, he added. He informed that at present about 30 of the total 257 market committees in the state have been connected by computers at Pune. State cooperation minister Jaiprakash Mundada said that the Maharashtra State Agricultural Marketing Board has prepared a plan for the integration development of around 1,000 regulated markets and another 1,000 in the unregulated markets with an investment of Rs 700 crore. Union ministry of food processing secretary PS Bhatnagar said the centre will set up a special corpus for the development of agro and food processing shortly.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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