Secretary, Department of Food and Public Distribution, Sudhanshu Pandey inspects paddy procurement centre at Kardha in Bhandara district
The Secretary, Department of Food and Public Distribution, Sudhanshu Pandey during his recent visit to Maharashtra inspected the paddy procurement centre at Kardha in Bhandara district to oversee the paddy procurement being done in the state.
Senior Officers of Food Corporation of India (FCI), Maharashtra State Government, and procuring agencies accompanied him during this visit. He advised the state government authorities to improve upon the infrastructure at the procurement centres. He also interacted with the farmers at the centre and encouraged them to avail the benefits of various schemes of the Centre. It was also informed that a new testing method of rice has been introduced by the Government of India to know the age of the rice which would encourage paddy procurement and help the farmers.
The Secretary, Food visited a Fair Price Shop (FPS) at Kardha where he interacted with the FPS owner and some PDS beneficiaries. He expressed satisfaction over the system of issuing Ration under NFSA (National Food Security Act) and PM-GKAY (Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana).
The Secretary of Food emphasised to give impetus on setting up fortified rice manufacturing plants especially in and around paddy procuring districts of Gondia, Bhandara, Chandrapur.
He emphasised promoting solvent extraction plants for manufacturing rice bran oil in the procuring districts. He advised the Government of Maharashtra to work on crop diversification especially the production of Millets as the year 2023 is being declared as the International Year of Millets by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN. He further emphasised putting up grain-based distilleries for the production of ethanol and thereby promoting maize cultivation.
