Govt floats horticulture corporation

Hyderabad: To meet the growing demand of vegetables, fruits and spices, and control the skyrocketing prices of essential commodities, the Telangana government on Sunday decided to create a horticulture corporation and establish food processing hubs in a 200-acre campus in the State.

This decision was taken in the cabinet meeting presided over by Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao here. The cabinet expressed serious concern over the rampant adulteration of eatables, which is putting the consumers’ health at high risk.

Briefing the media after the meeting, state Agriculture Minister P Srinivas Reddy said the remedy to contain the adulteration was to encourage food processing industry under the government management.

The processing units will be established to produce required food items such as chilli powder. The horticulture corporation will oversee these production and distribution establishments.

To bring down the dependency of the state on other states to meet its fruits and vegetable requirement, the corporation will make efforts to add another 4.45 lakh hectares of land to the existing 6.65 lakh hectares that are being used for horticultural production, he informed. The total requirement of horticulture crops in the state was 67.83 lakh tonnes.