VIJAYAWADA: Chief Minister Y.S.

Jagan Mohan Reddy has said the state government will set up multi-purpose facility centres including for agricultural marketing and food processing under Rythu Bharosa Kendras (RBKs) across the state with an outlay of `10,235 crore. He said during a review meeting on Dr YSR RBKs, agricultural marketing, food processing and Amul project here on Thursday that the construction of multi-purpose facility centers would start in March and be completed in a year.

The facilities would include warehouses, drying platform, collection centers, cold rooms for storage, custom hiring centers, primary processing centers, assaying equipment, Janata Bazaars, bulk milk cooling units, cattle sheds and aqua infra, in select villages, procurement centers and e-marketing. The chief minister said it's very important to provide quality inputs to farmers on time.

Farmer should be informed when seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and the like will be delivered and the schedules should be displayed in RBKs as well.The CM said quality aqua feed and aqua seed should be provided through RBKs.

The labs to be established at the constituency level to determine the quality of feed and seeds should be linked with RBKs.

The products of organic and natural farming methods should be brought under RBKs and well publicised.

Manufacturing units of bio-pesticides and bio-fertilizers should be encouraged at the village level. The chief minister said ‘From Seed to Sale’ should be the motto of RBKs and they should support farmers in all activities ranging from sowing seeds to selling the crop.

Agriculture university should prepare an action plan for effective functioning of RBKs and a curriculum should be prepared on marketing, before harvest and after harvest.

It was important for officials to focus on completing the construction of Rytu Bazaars in the fixed timeline.The CM said the Nadu-Nedu scheme should be implemented in market yards and the proposals were laid out with a Rs212 crore budget.

He directed officials to prepare proposals for modernization of all Rytu Bazaars across the state. Officials said an additional 125 Urban RBKs would be set up along with 10,641 RBKs and the vehicles count in RBK hubs has been increased to 154 from the existing 65.

Some 147 constituency level integrated labs will start functioning from March 31 and 13 district-level integrated Agri labs will be set up by June 30.Agriculture minister Kurasala Kannababu, agriculture special chief secretary Poonam Malakondaiah, Zero Budget Natural Farming Adviser and vice-chairman T Vijayakumar, agriculture commissioner Arun Kumar, special commissioner for marketing PS Pradyumna, horticulture commissioner Chiranjeevi Chowdary, AP dairy development cooperative federation MD Babu A, AP AGROS MD Srikesh Balaji Rao, civil supplies corporation MD A Suryakumari and other senior officials were present.