Substandard seeds mar festival

He was speaking at the Hobli-level agriculture festival organised in the district by Zilla Panchayat and several other departments on Monday.

He said in 1951, the country produced 690 million tonnes of food grains. At present, it is around 2,400 million tonnes. With the burgeoning population, the agriculture production was not sufficient. The government is giving loan at very low rate of interests to agriculture, fisheries and self-help groups and farmers should make use of the same.

Speaking on the occasion, MLA C Puttarangashetty said outstanding farmers should be selected in taluk and district levels and honoured in such functions. The agriculture department should ensure maximum participation of farmers in these kinds of events.

District agriculture department joint director B M Shivamallu said that the festival was being organised for the first time at hobli-level. The festival will be held for a period of five days. The state government has released Rs 37 lakh for the festival. District panchayat vice-president S Shivkumar, Taluk Panchayat president M Chikkamahadevu, vice president Nagarathnamma, members B K Ravikumar, A S Krishna, Shivaswamy, Bangaranayak, Chandakavadi grama panchayat president Shivaprasad, Taluk agriculture society president K S Nagarajappa and others were present.

Substandard seeds

It is usual that pesticides, seeds provided by the agriculture department are substandard. However, when seeds kept to provide information to farmers turn out to be of low quality, who is responsible for that?

The apathy of the officials came to light at the festival. Ten stalls were opened at the festival. Several stalls for departments such as agriculture, horticulture, fisheries department were designated before-hand. A few curious farmers went to take a look at the seeds and pesticides kept in a box at the festival.

When the boxes were opened, it was noticed that food grains such as ragi, paddy, sunflower and other seeds were substandard and had expired, reflecting the apathy of officials concerned.  The programme started more than one hour behind schedule much to the dismay of farmers.