Statesman News Service
MALDA, 26 NOV: The horticulture department is approaching potential farmers in Malda to set up high tech polyhouse to grow off-season vegetables, with financial assistance from the National Horticulture Mission.
The department's development officer, Mr Goutam Roy, is taking personal initiative in the matter and demonstrating the polyhouse concept for vegetable cultivation, which is expected to give the farmers a decent profit.
The department is presenting the project as a self-employment programme for the educated unemployed youths of the farmers’ families who are not keen to take up conventional cultivation in the fields as a means of livelihood.
According to Mr Goutam Roy, the farmers are hesitant to invest in setting up polyhouses, as they do not know the NHM bears 50 per cent of the cost for setting up a polyhouse.
“Vegetables such as tomato, capsicum, cucumber and coriander grow well in polyhouses.
An unemployed youth can start such a project with financial assistance from the NHM. Besides, interested persons can cultivate flowers like gerbera in polyhouses.
A group of farmers in Nadia is successfully producing gerbera in polyhouses and there is good demand of the cut flower,” Mr Roy claimed.
He also claimed that the rate of production of high yielding tomato and other vegetables is three times more in polyhouses than in normal field growing conditions. “Unemployed youths can easily set up a polyhouse in a 500 to 1000 square metre area and make good gains out of it,” he added.
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