The Madhya Pradesh government on Monday came out with a scheme seeking to promote entrepreneurship among farmers’ children by helping them set up custom processing and servicing centres for agriculture commodities like onions, garlic, tomato and soybean. Under the scheme, children and dependents of farmers will get bank loans up to Rs 25 lakh to set up processing plants to make paste, puree and tofu, besides fruit and vegetable dehydration plants and modern jaggery plants in villages.
Sources admitted the scheme owed its existence to the failure of mega food parks. One such park inaugurated in Khargone to create modern infrastructure to minimize post-harvest losses of horticulture and non-horticulture produce found a few takers.
The government will provide 40 per cent subsidy to general category beneficiaries and 50 per cent to those belonging to Scheduled Castes and Tribes. The scheme was given in-principal approval by the krishi cabinet that met under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Principal Secretary (Agriculture) Rajesh Rajora said the target was to set up 1,000 such centres in the next three years. The loan amount could be increased to Rs 40 lakh in the future.
Children of farmers who are above 18 and have cleared Class X examinations will be eligible for the scheme.
