Union Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Sudarshan Bhagat has suggested farmers of the State to keep themselves abreast of the modern inventions and utilise existing modern agricultural practices in their daily farming life to take their earnings to more sustainable level.
Addressing farmers of Namkom block in Indian Institute of Natural Resins and Gums in a programme organised by Indian Council for Agricultural Research (IACR)-Indian Institute of Agriculture and Biotechnology (IIAB), he asked farmers to take maximum benefit of the programmes run by State Government and other agricultural institutions for the farmers. The workshop was organised in Indian Institute of Natural Resins and Gums (IINRG) campus in Namkom.
“It is better that we understand that farming has changed a lot in recent years. Use of chemical fertilisers, modern machines, changing climate and many other factors have forced us to walk with the time and keep ourselves changing. Government is doing a lot for farmer fraternity. Institutions are working to develop advanced seeds and new crops and I strongly believe that if farmers start connecting them with whatever information is available for them from whatsoever platform it is available, they will see their income increasing manifold,” said Bhagat on second day of two-day Farmer First programme by ICAR-IIAB.
Encouraging farmers to opt alternative farming also, a Gumla boy and lohardaga BJP MP Bhagat said that the time had come, when farmers needed to focus on fisheries, bee-keeping, poultry and horticulture. “State government is running a number of programmes in fisheries, horticulture, bee-keeping and animal husbandry, which every farmer finding it difficult to get much out of traditional farming should switch to. All these fields are rich in terms of return on investment,” said Bhagat. He added that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi had targeted to see farmers’ income doubling by 2022, and every farmer needed to take advantage of programmes run for State and Union governments for them.
NABARD Chief General Manager (CGM) Subrato Mandal, on the other hand, suggested farmers to modernise their way of farming regardless whatever their crops were going to be. “First thing, try to opt crops according to climatic conditions like availability of water, sun and other factors. Then, use as much organic fertilizers as possible, because going organic is not only new trend, but is also healthy and profitable,” said Mondal.
He also said that the organisation was working with government and other agencies to help farmers not only get good return for their crops, but was also trying to create direct link between end user and farmer. “We are going to start a water campaign from last week of April to last week of June across the State in which we will educate farmers about how to get more produce in relatively lesser use of water,” said Mondal where IINRG and IIAB Director Kewal Krishna Sharma, Workshop Convenor Virendra Kumar Yadav, IIAB Principal Scientist Nirmal Kumar and many scientists and stakeholders were present.