Port Blair, Oct 29: ICAR-Central Island Agricultural Research Institute in collaboration with Department of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Services, A&N Administration jointly organized one day workshop cum stakeholders meeting on 28.10.2020 at ICAR-CIARI, Port Blair. Ms. V. Reddy, IAS, Secretary (Ag, DAHVS) was the Chief Guest. Mr.V.Mashar, General Manager, NABARD was the Guest of Honour and Mr. Bishnu Pada Ray, Ex MP was the Special Guest for the meeting. The meeting was attended by Dr. M. Sujata Hegde, Director I/c, DAHVS, Dr. Dilip Kumar, Joint Director, Agriculture, all Heads of Division of ICAR-CIARI and senior officers from the line Department. The meeting was organized to discuss the issues, future prospects and challenges faced by the small, medium and large agri-preneurs of these Islands.
A total of 20 stakeholders representing different sectors of agriculture enterprise attended the meeting. A total of 16 presentations were made by the farmers on plantation based farming system, integrated farming system, piggery, goat farming, poultry, floriculture, intercropping in plantation crops, turmeric and mushroom. Subsequently, farmers presented their farming practices through power point presentation. Dr. Jai Sunder, Pr. Scientist and Co-organizing secretary welcomed the dignitaries and briefed about the purpose of the meeting.
Dr.T.Sujatha, Sr.Scientist & Organizing Secretary briefed about the varieties and technologies developed by ICAR-CIARI and impact of those technologies in the form of success stories. She said that the meeting has been organized in such a way that farmers will present about their farming on business mode and it’s a representation of whole farming community of A&N Islands. In her address Secretary, Ag &AH appreciated all presenters and urged to form FPO and become a role model and ambassador in their respective farming practices so that the best practices should be spread to other parts of the islands. She asked to have synergism among all departments as there is no benefit if working individually and transparency is needed at all local levels to facilitate the entrepreneurs to avail facilities.
She told farmers to have networking for marketing and branding and marketing is important. She also asked to arrange for workshops like this with industries also in future. She said that subsidy is important but it is a short term solution for any problems and farmers have solutions among themselves and they can share best practices through brand ambassadors. She said that agro tourism has to be developed and told all the entrepreneurs to approach her directly at her office for any problems or challenges. At the end, she said to classify the problems and future plans of all presenters and told to arrange for workshop with all departments to arrive at solutions. Mr. V.Mashar, GM, NABARD highlighted the role of NABARD in facilitating the transfer of technologies from lab to land in association with ICAR-CIARI to double the income of farmers. He said that input and output aggregations are needed to improve the outcome of technologies which is possible through farmers operation and asked all the farmers to take risk to become quality entrepreneurs, to be profitable, be self motivated and be acquainted with technology. He said that networking is the base for the entrepreneurs who must have management skills and skill on financial management, flexibility, passion and wish for entrepreneurship development. Dr. D. Bhattacharya, Director (I/c) talked about the role of agricultural scientists in the green, yellow, blue and pink revolutions and said that all the citizens are agri-interdependent that needs quality seeds which can be produced by uninterrupted power supply, cold storage, good fertilizers, irrigation and machineries. Mr. Bishnu Pada Ray asked farmers to initiate tissue culture, grafting and use poultry manure to improve the production of banana, berry, sweet malta, moringa, arecanut and coconut. On the occasion a policy brief on rural poultry production unit was released and mini hatchery funded by NABARD was also inaugurated by the Chief Guest and other dignitaries in the livestock farm complex of Animal Science Division. The programme was coordinated by Dr. S.K. Zamir Ahmed, Pr Scientist & I/c Social Science Section and vote of thanks proposed by Dr.L.B.Singh, Head I/c, KVK, South Andaman.
