Agriculture Minister Randheer Singh on Wednesday flagged off 56 kharif krishi raths aimed to generate awareness among farmers of the State ahead of paddy season. The vehicles laden with latest information related to different welfare schemes, crop insurance, farm loans along with agriculture scientists, officials and krishi mitras would travel in every district.
“The kharif raths would go to different blocks of each of 24 districts across that State and move for 15 days starting from May 25. Farmers can get all relevant information related to paddy season such as subsidised seeds, Prime Minister Fashal Bima Yojna, irrigation programmes, soil testing etc. Department officials and experts would travel with the vehicles so that large number of farmers can be benefited,” said the Minister after releasing the vehicles.
At the same time the Minister also outlined some of future plans of the Department to help farmers, especially in the severe drought prevailing in the State. “From today itself we have started standard paddy seed distribution programme on 75 per cent subsidy to the farmers. This apart, since we have suffered from drought last year, construction of over one lakh dovas and renovation of 2000 ponds are going on. Against earlier five lakh farmers given agriculture insurance cover, we have doubled the target under PMFBY for 2016-17,” added Randheer.
The State Government has notified the crop insurance scheme which would come into force from July 1. The Minister however also admitted that dova construction work had been hit at some places because of non-availability of JCB machines.
He also stressed over agriculture single window programme the State has adopted which is set to be opened in 100 blocks allover during this fiscal. latest figures suggest that 10 blocks have so far been covered and the rest 90 would get, what can be the one stop solution for the farmers’ woes, within a month.
“Besides agriculture, we are also focusing sufficiently on fishery and have set target to produce 1.40 lakh MT this year. Areas such as floriculture, fruits etc would make the farmers insulated from crop failure,” he said and mentioned about Department’s ambitious project to develop Jharkhand into an organic State. The department eyes to start organic farming in 100 panchayats on pilot basis this year which would be expanded further.