BHUBANESWAR: Union petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Saturday said the Centre is ready to extend a helping hand to open e-NAM centres in 57 sub-divisions of Odisha for easy marketing of farm produces.He said this while attending the valedictory ceremony of AgriVikas 2018, a two-day national-level workshop, organised at Siksha 'O' Anusandhan (SOA) deemed to be university here.Pradhan said the poor farmers of the state will get fair price of their agricultural produce through the e-NAM or e-National Agriculture Market (NAM). Even a tribal man from Koraput can sale his produce to a trader in Delhi with a better price than local market, he added.The e-NAM is an all India electronic trading portal which networks the existing agricultural produce marketing committee (APMC) mandis to create a unified national market for agricultural commodities. It was launched by the Centre in 2016.Odisha has 10 e-NAM centres. Some centres are Kuchinda in Sambalpur , Paralakhemundi in Gajapati, Kesinga in Kalahandi and Sakhigopal in Puri district. “We are ready to cooperate with the state government to help our farmers. If we open these centers, farmers will get maximum benefit,” he added.He said China needs non-Basmati rice from India. “Odisha produces more than five million tonne non-Basmati rice and we can export at least one million tonne to our neighbouring country to get good international price for our produce. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) also wants India to export agricultural produce to this golf country. We only export 18 per cent, but the UAE wants it to convert to 80 per cent. So we have a very good chance to sale our farm produce in international market,” he added.He said Odisha produces 40,000 tonne prawn through cultivation and gets 20,000 tonne from the sea. “We export it to China and Japan and these countries sell it to the USA after processing. This is the time we need to make it sure that our prawn or marine produce will be exported to the USA directly,” he suggested.He put emphasis on generation of Bio-CNG gas from agricultural produce and described how Bio-CNG can contribute Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s missions of reducing import fuel dependence and increasing farmers’ income.Among others, state food supplies minister Surya Narayan Patro, union agriculture secretary Shobhana K Patnaik, bureaucrats, farmers, agriculture scientists, students and agri entrepreneurs attended the event.

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