Chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat stressed on the need for working on the concept of water corpus and encouraging value addition to agricultural produce in order to increase the income of farmers and sustain agriculture. The chief minister said this while addressing the gathering at the summit on climate resilient mountain agriculture summit on climate resilient mountain agriculture.organised by the watershed management department at Forest Research Institute (FRI) here on Wednesday. .
The CM said, “We seriously need to change our way of thinking. I was talking to an ex-minister who said that during his childhood it used to take him 10 days to reach his college in Pauri on foot. By our time, my primary school was in the neighbourhood though we had to walk about five kilometres to reach our high school. The situation has improved considerably now but we also need to change our thinking. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke in his recent Mann ki Baat address about villagers in Bageshwar who make biscuits and other products from the locally cultivated Mandua (millet). This value addition to their produce has helped them enhance their incomes. Since I became the CM I have been calling for sale of Prasad made from local produce in the Char Dhams. A group of 19 women opened an outlet in Badrinath selling Prasad made from local produce and in two months they earned about Rs 19 lakh out of which their profit was Rs 9,00,000. We need to undertake similar value addition to various produce. People often say that wild animals are causing major damage to agriculture but wild animals are not a new phenomenon as they were there in the past too. Due to decrease in traditional collective efforts in agriculture and other factors, the animals are causing more problems. One of the ways to tackle this problem is to cultivate aromatic plants, spices and tubular produce which are less likely to be damaged by wild animals. Apart from taking measures to address issues in agriculture, we also need to think seriously about building a water corpus. Our farms need to be tilled regularly to encourage percolation of rainwater.
At present we are using only about 0.4 per cent of rainwater while the bulk of rainwater ends up washing away the topsoil and rich minerals in it." The CM also spoke about the various measures taken by the government and concerned citizens in different parts of the state for water conservation and rainwater harvesting.
Delivering the keynote address on the occasion, noted historian Shekhar Pathak expressed concern at the impacts of climate change. "Firstly, we need to understand the impact of climate change. Along with it, the privatisation of water and other natural resources along with globalisation has intensified the pressure on environment to our detriment. We need to seriously think about how to sustain agriculture in the face of such challenges. Another alarming factor is that Uttarakhand seems to be the only Himalayan state which has not had a land settlement to survey and categorise the land for decades now. We need to have a fresh land survey to ascertain various important aspects without delay. We also need to encourage setting up of special agricultural zones and also think seriously about the real consequences of privatisation of water and resultant exploitation of natural resources," he stressed.
Addressing the gathering on the occasion, the state watershed management minister Satpal Maharaj stressed on the need for diversification of agriculture. He said, "We also need to cultivate items like sea buckthorn and other high value produce which are in high demand across the world. In addition to this, we also need to build a gene bank of all the various crops, fruits and vegetables that grow in the state. There was once a time when there were fields in Tapovan fragrant with Basmati rice grown in the area for the then king of Tehri but now the famous Basmati rice of this region seems to have vanished. People in other places sell Basmati calling it Dehradun Basmati but the same is not cultivated here as it was in the past," he said.
MlA Harbans Kapoor, principal secretary Manisha Panwar and FRI director Savita also expressed their views on the occasion.