The National Seed Corporation (NSC) is preparing to sell record seeds this year. Last year, a total of 768 crore seeds were sold in Kharif season, but this year 40 percent more have been sold so far than last year.
The corporation has set a target of selling seeds worth Rs 15 hundred crore this year. Preparations are made to supply quality seeds to the farmers. With the support of the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare and the initiative of NSC, seeds worth Rs 287 crore have been sold till July 31 in the Kharif season which started from April 1.
In such a situation, the corporation has set a target of selling seeds worth Rs 450 crore by the end of September. Seed Corporation provides seeds of 621 varieties of 80 crops to the farmers.
According to the official information received from NSC in the country, the corporation is providing high quality seeds to the farmers of the country with the help of ten regional offices, 65 field offices, eight farms-five quality control laboratories and 2800 seed vendor centers at Delhi, Secunderabad, Bhopal, Kolkata and Pune. Seeds are made available at affordable rates.
According to Ashwani Kumar, Joint Secretary and CMD of NSC, who is handling the Seed Corporation in Mantralaya, the National Seed Corporation has only improved its methodology to achieve this success and time bound accountability. Now the system is completely transparent.
In this, the applications coming from the states are now mandatory to be disposed of within the stipulated time of 72 hours, not months. Apart from this, all the regional offices will have to monitor the supply of seeds to the sales mechanism and solve the problems coming in the way of uninterrupted sale with immediate effect, as well as to ensure that the seeds are available to the farmers in a timely manner. Working together to provide quality-to-demand responsiveness.
Apart from this, with the help of the Ministry of Agriculture, the corporation is also working on a plan to develop seed farm houses at new locations on a large scale. In this sequence, to prepare seeds for the cultivation of oilseeds, it is being started on Tuesday with a plan to level the ravine in five villages of Morena district of Madhya Pradesh.