Karnataka government has now identified 315 acre at Karatagi in Gangavathi of Koppal district to set up Rice Technology Park and 60 acre for a Maize Technology Park at Ranebennur. The government has planned to develop the two parks under the public-private partnership model.
While the project cost for the Rice Technology Park is Rs 128 crore, for the Maize Technology Park it is Rs 111 crore, according to officials from the Karnataka State Agriculture Marketing Board.
The park will be the focal point of agro-based activity in the region catering to most parts of the Tungabhadra Command Area. Sona Masuri, which is a lightweight and aromatic variety of rice, is grown pre-dominantly in this area. This rice is exported to the US, UK, Middle-East, South East Asia and Australia.
The key objective of the government is to make Gangavati the hub for rice- based food processing sector by enabling a self-sustainable eco-system. It will also augment paddy production and processing thereby improving the yield. Currently seven APMCs are functioning in the Tungabadra Command Area. Apart from establishing rice mills, there is scope to set up units to manufacture byproducts of paddy and rice besides power generation.
The department officials pointed out that in the last few years, the production of paddy had doubled, but the infrastructure required to handle such huge quantity had not been created. Now the value addition would be development of rice-based noodles, rice-based alcohol and rice bran oil.
The parks would have demarcated areas for trading, packing, quality control and knowledge source centre for novel value-added product manufacture. In order to ensure total use of the park, there would be facilities to produce rice flour, rice rava and paddy husk used for power, animal-poultry feeds besides brick making. The park is also well-connected by road and rail with Mangaluru being the nearest airport.
In the case of Maize Technology Park, corn is the second major crop cultivated in the state. Annually an average of 4 million tonne of maize is grown in the state at Haveri, Davengeri, Ballari, Belagavi, Bagalkot and Chikkaballapura districts. The land for the park is in the mega market yard which belongs to APMC. It will have a storage capacity of 32,000 MT. The annual arrival of maize to Haveri district regulated market is 1.8 million MT. Now this park is surrounded by the maize growing area. “Our aim was to position Ranebennur as a hub for maize-based production,” revealed the officials.
Both the parks have adequate infrastructure facilities like internal road network with street lighting, water supply storm water drainage and electricity distribution system.
“We are providing more subsidies to backward districts and have also rationalised the incentives and fixed assets under three categories: Rs 10 crore to Rs 75 crore, Rs 75 crore to Rs 150 crore and above Rs 150 crore,” said G Latha Krishan Rau, additional chief secretary-cum-development commissioner.
