LAHORE: The agriculture department has been given Rs100 million to undertake initiative of setting up hi-tech mechanisation service centres to provide latest farm machinery to farmers on rent.

The proposed centres will be set up in a way that the potential proprietor (a farmer, firm or cooperative society) will bear 50pc of the cost while the rest will be provided by the provincial government.

New machinery including hay balers for cultivating Rhodes grass (a growing demand in the Middle East), silage balers as replacement of green fodder and combined harvesters will be introduced through these centres to replace the traditional and obsolete ones, says Director-General (Fields) Qurban Ahmad Sandhu.

The pre-qualification process for selecting the potential proprietors will begin within weeks and an advertisement for hiring staff for the project director offices will be issued soon, he adds.

He claims that progressive farmers have already started approaching the extension wing of the agriculture department to participate in the scheme.

In all, 72 centres will be established in the province. Eighteen of these will be set up in the first phase, one each in the nine divisional headquarters. Sandhu believes that the project will help improve local manufacturing industry and job creation through reverse engineering of the hi-tech machines to be imported for the centres.

Published in Dawn, July 25th, 2017