Few in Punjab would know about celery seed oil. But in the Amritsar-Gurdaspur belt,this medicinal plant has worked wonders for farmers. They are now receiving nearly Rs 50,000 per acre from this three-month crop,as its low input cost and high yield making it worth every penny invested. The high demand from pharma companies,which use oil extracted from celery seed for cough and chest infections,has further made the crop attractive,prompting farmers to set up their processing units,which were earlier located in distant states like Kerala. Farmers like Gurmukh Singh Sidhu,who grows tuberose (used in perfumes) and roses at his 400-acre land in Ludhiana,has set up his own processing unit at Rs 1.25 crore for extracting oil from celery seed. Farmers growing celery are making a whopping Rs 60,000 to Rs 70,000 per kg from the seeds and by setting up processing units they will also be able to extract oil and market it directly to pharma companies, says Gurmukh Singh Rai,president of the Punjab Progressive Aromatic and Medicinal Plants Association. The 130-member association is urging farmers to diversify crops and move beyond the wheat-paddy cycle to prevent soil degradation and check fast-depleting water table across the state. From Ludhiana,Mohali,Ropar,Gurdaspur,Nawanshehr and Sangrur to Bhatinda,Moga and Tarn Taran,its members are growing and marketing cut roses,tuberose and celery seed. Next is bringing clusters of wasteland under herbal sweetener stevia and aloe vera cultivation. Earlier stevia cultivation was taken up in Bhatinda but it could not be sustained due to lack of processing facilities. The association has now tied-up with Pune-based Ace Agro Group that has brought small farms in Latur and Sindhudurg areas of Maharashtra under stevia cultivation. The group,which is producing 55,000 cut-roses per day and exporting them to European countries including France,Germany,Switzerland and Holland,will also offer post-harvest facilities such as washing,sorting,pre-cooling and grading,besides providing technical knowledge to farmers, adds Rai. Giving a push to this diversification drive are banks like the SBI that are going beyond their target of agriculture lending. We have invested Rs 4,500 crore in agriculture in Punjab,Haryana,Himachal,J&K and UT Chandigarh. This is more than our target of 18 per cent. We recently took 11 farmers of Punjab to Talegaon in Pune to expose them to high-tech floriculture cultivation, S K Sehgal,chief general manager,SBI,Chandigarh said. The bank,which signed an MoU with the association today,will pump in Rs 300-crore fresh investment into horticulture in the Chandigarh circle,of which nearly Rs 100 crore will be in Punjab.
