‘Growers not interested in sowing edible oil crops despite subsidy’

TOBA TEK SINGH: Cultivators have not taken interest in growing edible oil crops in the district despite the announcement of subsidy to them by the Agriculture Department.

Talking here on Saturday, Agriculture Department Deputy Director Mian Nisar Ahmad told that the government had to import edible oil worth Rs 350 billion every year so a campaign had started to increase oil seed crop area and production.

He told that to appease the farmers to sow more and more edible oil crops, subsidy had already been announced for different edible oil crops. If a farmer sows five acres of canola crop, he was given Rs 1,000 per acre as advance for purchase of canola seed and Rs 4,000 per acre was also given when canola crop was harvested, he informed.

He added that applications had now been invited by the department from canola crops cultivators of the district to take part in the per acre yield competition.

He said out of total 40,000 acres where edible oil crops of canola, jumba (arugula), rapeseed, sesame and mustard, sown during current season in the district, the canola crop had been sown only on just 2,600 acres.

To give attraction to the growers for sowing of more and more canola crop, they would awarded cash prizes of Rs 600,000, Rs400,000 and Rs 200,000 per acre if they become first, second and third position holders in Faisalabad division, he told.

He said that canola crop was in good condition across the district and its harvesting would be completed in the second week of February.

College student tortured by fellows: A college student was brutally tortured by his two fellows over a minor issue outside

the Government Postgraduate College here on Saturday.

According to the FIR, when Muhammad Shoaib came out from the college his accused fellows

Asad Abbas and Tasawar Abbas along with their two accomplices allegedly beat and tortured him badly.