District administrations are in the process to shortlist self-made farmers who have done something extraordinary out of little resources with them in order to send them on a foreign trip.
Following the directions of the Government, most of the districts have started the selection process for the farmers who would be touring Israel to upgrade their framing acumen.
“We have invited applications from the farmers and till date around 15 interested farmers have applied for the learning trip. Though there is no deadline given to us for forwarding the applications by the Department but we are expecting to complete the process on our end by this month,” said Ranchi District Agriculture Officer (DAO) Ashok Sinha.
Inputs coming in suggest that the Government is not necessarily looking up to large farmers. Instead, progressive lot would be given preference in the selection process which is first of its kind initiative in the State.
“Basic feature of the Israel trip is going to be micro irrigation techniques and we have some good examples here in the State in this direction. What we are looking at is to identify such farmers who are progressive, technology savvy and have potential to disseminate the knowledge further. The whole idea is to spread the knowledge gained and experience among the others back home. Thus selecting farmers with that tendency is going to be crucial for the success of the scheme,” said Agriculture Director Rajiv Kumar.
Chief Minister Raghubar Das had in June announced about the scheme which is to identify five farmers from each of 24 districts and send them to Israel for agriculture training. The water-starved country is known for its advanced techniques of micro irrigation with least input cost coupled with higher production level.
“Those farmers would also be trained to utilise barren land which is abundance in the State and left unused. They would learn about how to get output from even that and bring such area into production cycle. We have told the districts to furnish the list soon so that it can be finalised and travel documents of the farmers and officials accompanying them to Israel can be prepared,” added the Director expecting the trip early next year.
Hazaribagh DAO Ashok Samrat said that they are almost ready with the task. “We would send our list to the Government by this week. About 14-15 applications have come so far. A meeting would be called by the DC to select them based on the criteria such as their farm related activities, productivity level, their eagerness in availing different Government schemes and their role and behaviour in society. We are also making sure that larger section of the society gets represented,” said the official.
However, there are districts like Garhwa, where the process to call applications has just started and Palamu where DAO Adman Minz has nothing much to showcase in this regard; fearing the tour turning out to be nothing more than a junket for many.