Twenty farmers from the remote tribal village of Attal in Tyuni block of Dehradun district left on Wednesday on an exposure visit to Gujarat to undertake capacity building and skill development activities.
The village has been selected by the Central Soil and Water Conservation Research and Training Institute (CSWCRTI) Dehradun for implementing the Tribal Sub Plan.There are about 300 households in Attal village and more than half of them are engaged in agriculture.Mostly cereals, pulses, vegetables and fruit crops are cultivated in this village. On field visits and interactions with farmers, CSWCRTI scientists critically observed a huge potential of agricultural development if water scarcity is addressed.
In the beginning, series of meetings and interactions with farmers were held and village community was organised into nine user groups which were further organised as Attal Fruit and Vegetable Grower Association.
After conducting detailed field survey and interaction with the farmers, water resource development was taken up here and a six kilometre long pipeline was laid in difficult mountainous terrain to harvest water from a perennial source where sufficient discharge was available.
Till date, a total of 125 farmers have been associated with this intervention of participatory water resource development in Attal where farmers are cultivating vegetables under assured irrigated conditions developed in the village.
As part of training on various aspects of soil and water conservation and watershed management, in the presence of the institute director Dr PK Mishra, 20 farmers from the village left for Gujarat on an exposure visit.
They will visit Gambhira Cooperative Farming Society, Anand Agricultural University, Amul Dairy and Vasad Research Centre of CSWCRTI to learn about cooperative farming and new agricultural techniques for making hill agriculture of Uttarakhand more remunerative.
This exposure visit is being coordinated by the institute’s principal scientist Dr DV Singh while technical officers DK Tomar and KR Joshi are accompanying the farmers on their visit.