Union Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare (Independent Charge) Sudarshan Bhagat has said that Jharkhand possessed all the capabilities to lead farmers across the country with diversification to dozens of otherwise untapped fields like animal husbandry and cash crop farming.
Speaking at the inauguration session of two-day workshop on Friday on Drafting Pro-Poor livestock Policy for Doubling Farmers’ Income in Jharkhand, Bhagat said that shortage of agricultural land due to its natural geographical terrain in the State left immense opportunities and requirement for farmers to diversify in fields like poultry, dairy, fisheries, bee-keeping and animal husbandry.
In order to understand steps in pro-poor policy making, review the present policy, identify strength and gaps of animal husbandry sector and propose a way forward to formulate a comprehensive policy and implementation plan, and appreciate the need for doubling farmers’ income and understand vision of livestock sector in Jharkhand, the Department of Agriculture, Horticulture and Animal Husbandry in association with GAlVmed has organized a two-day workshop on April 21-22.
“We need to encourage farmers to diversify in fields like horticulture, fisheries, fruit bearing plants and trees and livestock farming, which can easily multiply farmers’ income in states like Jharkhand. Farmers require technical know-how and information about whatever is being done for them. We will have to ensure that they get right support, help and encouragement to go for alternative farming,” said Bhagat where State’s Agriculture and animal Husbandry Minister Randhir Kumar Singh, GAlVmed Regional Manager (India and South East Asia) Mamta Dhawan, agriculture scientists, officials of the Agriculture and Animal Husbandry department from across the State, professors and others were also present.
He dwelt upon programmes run by the Central government for farmers and said that farmers in the State should be informed about those programmes through workshops and seminars. He said that agriculture and animal husbandry were inter-dependent on each other and grew hand in hand. Citing examples from Chhattisgarh and other states where farmers had got their income multiplying manifold after diversification, Bhagat said that there was much scope in Jharkhand for those lessons to be learnt from and processes replicated. Notably, doubling farmers’ income by 2022 is one of the key visions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Singh said that the Centre believed that Eastern India, especially Jharkhand was having much scope of leading second green revolution, and our farmers were committed to prove the Centre right. “Now we are looking at pulses farming, edible oil seeds farming which could be grown in lesser availability of water. We cannot remain dependent on rainwater anymore, at least for smaller land owner farmers. Before we implement long term plans like dams and lakes to provide water for agriculture, we needed to come out with short term plans like Dova,” said Singh.
“We all are working in order to double the income of farmers by 2022, and it is possible only through encouraging farmers to go for other sources of income like livestock farming, which has immense potential in the State,” Singh added.
Both Bhagat and Singh opined that farmers needed to be diverted farming of fruit bearing trees and plants have incredible possibilities in the State apart from flower plantation, soya farming and others.