Government mulls proposal to build food storage unit on Railway land

New Delhi: The government is considering the idea to create food storage/ storage center on Railway land for safe storage of grains. The modern storage units will be built on the land near the Railway station, according to an official statement. 

This facility will extend two advantages; firstly, grain can be stored safely in an all-weather friendly way. Secondly, the grain can be sent to different states through railways in case of requirement.

Union Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan and Railway Minister Piyush Goyal held an important meeting on Tuesday. Another meeting is proposed to be held in the next 15 days to discuss the issue.

Meanwhile, Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal has urged Railway Minister Piyush Goyal to start a dedicated Kisan rail with refrigerated bogies from Abohar to Bangalore and Abohar to Kolkata respectively during the Kinnow harvest to benefit farmers of Punjab, Rajasthan, and Haryana.

Harsimrat Kaur Badal, who wrote a letter in this connection to Goyal, congratulating him for launching the Kisan rail initiative, said the cluster of Kinnow cultivation, which included adjoining areas from the states of Punjab, Haryana, and Rajasthan, was spread over one lakh hectares.

She said the town of Abohar in Punjab functioned as the focal market for aggregation of Kinnows and handled twenty-five lakh metric tonnes of produce every year. She said a Kisan rail originating from Abohar could take Kinnow to the southern and eastern states where there was a big market for the fruit, adding that the biggest market for the fruit was in Bangalore and Kolkata even as a significant quantity was exported to Bangladesh.

Badal said presently due to the highly perishable nature of the fruit, only 35 to 40 percent of the harvest reached the end consumers.

Notably, Kinnow harvest season falls between the months of December and March.