To save the farmers from distress sale of their produce, Director Agriculture Jammu, Inder Jeet today inaugurated Paddy Procurement Centre/Mandi, here at Village Sohanjana. Those present on the occasion included Agriculture Economist, K. K. Sharma; Chief Agriculture Officer Jammu, S. A. S. Reen; FCI Representative, Reshav; Tehsildar Mandal, Pankaj Singh; SDAO Marh, Ashwani Kunar Jojra; BDC Chairman, Madan lal, Sarpach, Balbir Singh besides other field functionaries and prominent farmers of the area. Procurement mandis are established every year by Food Corporation of India (FCI) in collaboration with Agriculture Department to facilitate the farmers in hassle free sale of their produce. The Director Agriculture instructed the concerned officers to ensure that farmers get minimum support price for paddy as notified by the GOI. Minimum Support Price of Rs. 1888/- per quintal for Grade A and Rs. 1868/- per quintal for Common Grade Paddy has been fixed for this year. Inder Jeet also stressed upon the officials to ensure the timely payment of paddy are made to the farmers through Direct Bank Transfer (DBT). It was informed in that 09 procurement centers in Jammu district, 08 in Kathua and 1 procurement center (Mandies) in Samba have been opened in the first phase. All sort of Infrastructural and logistic support has been kept intact at all these paddy procurement centres.
