M. Jacob Abraham ,Deputy Director, PIB, Thiruvananthapuram.
The new spices park set up by Spices Board was commissioned in Guna, Madhya Pradesh. The new park is expected to make a clear impact on the production and processing of seed spices in nearby 11 districts covering the States of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. The Union Minister of State for Power, Sri Jyotiraditya M Scinida inaugurated the park on March 16, 2013, set up in the village of Mavan in Guna which will cater to thousands of seed spices farmers in the districts of Guna, Ashok Nagar, Mandsaur, Ratlam, Rajgarh, Neemuch, Shivapuri, Morena, Sheopur in the State of Madhya Pradesh and Jhalawar and Baran districts of Rajasthan.
The Guna Park with an investment of Rs. 45 crore is the fourth in the series of Spices Parks set up by Spices Board in various spice growing regions in the country. Spice Board of India has taken steps to establish spices parks at seven locations in the country to provide scientific infrastructure facilities in order to empower the growers of spices and ensure better price realization. Three of such parks are already functioning in Chhindwara, Madhya Pradesh, Puttady, Kerala and Jodhpur Rajasthan. The park is expected to bring in prosperity to Guna and the nearby hundreds of villages where seed spices are grown.
The Spices Park at Guna will ensure that the benefit generating from the park is well distributed among the farmers, processors and other end users as well. There will be backward linkage connecting the processing centre with the farmers to strenghten the total value chain. The farmers after harvesting their raw produce can either store at the park for a very affordable rent or they can sell the produce directly to the spice processors located within the park. The middlemen will have minimum involvement ultimately benefiting farmers in the form of fair price realization. The processors will be assured of supply of good quality raw produce for further processing and value addition.
Thus the park will provide a valuable link with the farmers and will encourage them to increase area under cultivation as well as to strive more for achieving higher productivity.
The common infrastructure facilities include networks of wide roads, uninterrupted power and water, sewerage and drainage network, fire fighting system, weighing bridge, truck terminal, park administrative office, guest house, restaurant, meeting hall, bank counter besides ample opportunities and space for warehousing. Processing facilities include fill line processing for seed spices.
The projects on Spices park are primarily intended to benefit the growing community through quality improvement, grading, packing, warehousing, etc for value addition which would lead to better price realization of their produce. The exporters can also set up their unit in the Parks for processing spices under the terms and conditions of the Board.
The Spices Parks are defined as industrial parks for processing and value addition of spices and spice products which offers the processing facilities at par with international standards.
The regional crop specific spices park is a well-conceived approach to have an integrated operation for cultivation, post harvesting, processing for value addition, packaging, storage and exports of spices and spice products by meeting the quality specifications of the consuming countries.
The basic objective of the concept is to provide common infrastructure facilities for both post harvest and processing operations of spices and spice products, which also aims at backward integration by providing rural employment. All the Spices Parks will have processing facilities at par with international standards in which the products undergo cleaning, grading, sorting, grinding, packing, warehousing etc. Apart from the above facilities, the Board will develop the common infrastructure facilities like roads, water supply system, power stations, fire fighting and control systems, weighing bridges, effluent treatment plants, quality lab for checking basic parameters, bank and post office counters, restaurant, business centres, guest house etc.
Establishment of spices park in the country is a major initiative of the Government as part of its commitment that any growth in the country should be more of agriculture-specific and pro-farmers. The spices park will ensure a better pricing for the products by shortening the channels in the supply chain system currently followed locally. The facilities available in the spices park can be utilized by the farming community for primary processing for improving the quality of their product and thereby they can directly sell to the exporters. Spices park will help render educative services to the farming and trading community. It provides training programmes on Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), post harvesting operations, advanced processing practices and global food safety and quality standards and issues etc.
(PIB Features.)
With inputs from Spices Board, Kochi, under Ministry of Commerce.
Read more / Original news source: http://manipur-mail.com/fourth-spices-park-in-guna/
