Jammu, Mar 16: Minister for Agriculture, Ghulam Hassan Mir today announced that the Agriculture Department in collaboration with Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is going to install Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) in 22 districts of the State.
 Winding up the discussion on the grants of Agriculture department in Legislative Assembly this afternoon, the Minister said AWSs will help in providing weather based data to the farming community enabling them to combat the vagaries of weather.
 To boost the agriculture activities, the minister said ATMA, a centrally sponsored scheme, has been launched in J&K during the current year, under which Rs. 10.01 crore have provided for extension programme and reforms.
 He said 28 Kissan melas at the block level and 30 Exhibitions were organised for creating awareness among the farmers, besides, 3 mega kissan melas were also held one each at Baramulla, Anantnag (Islamabad) and Jammu under the programme.
 He said the main objective of these melas is to acquaint the farmer community about the introduction of latest techniques in Agri fields used globally to achieve the target of quality yield productions.
 He said during last two years the agriculture yield has increased manifolds and assured that day is not far away when J&K will be at par with other States in yield production.
 To achieve the target of 4 per cent growth in agriculture, the minister said an investment driven and a multi-pronged effort has been launched to deploy much larger resources to achieve the target.
 He said Rs. 122.72 crore under Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY) has been received this year by the department as against Rs 42.05 crores last year.
 He said the same pattern have been replicated in all other Centrally sponsored schemes like Micro Management of Agriculture, Seed Village scheme, ATMA and Command Area Development and Water Management.       
 Mir said the department has also launched a massive programme to increase the seed replacement rate up to 25 per cent which is the national average. He said the seed replacement rate in the State was stagnating at around 10 per cent before this initiative.
 The Minister said with the efforts of the department, the Finance Department has provided Rs.21.60 crore under the trading account for the procurement of seeds this year as against Rs. 7.85 crore during 2009-10. He further said,16300 quintals of seeds were distributed during Kharief season 2010 and 47600 quintals of seeds during Rabi season were distributed. He said the department has taken advance action plan for the procurement of 22,700 quintals of seeds for Khrief 2011.
 Referring to the supply and distribution of fertilizers in the State, the Minister said that more companies have been roped in for supplying fertilizers in the State.  He said for the first time buffer stock of 2500 MTs of urea both at Jammu and Srinagar have been dumped for supply, besides the use of bio fertilizers is also being promoted.
 For sustaining growth of agriculture sector, the Minister said the main focus of the department is diversification of agriculture crops to motivate farmers to move from low to high yield crops and Niche products like Saffron, Rajmash, Zeera etc. He said this would help the State to increase agriculture incomes and help to generate employment opportunity in the farming sector.
 Mir said that the coalition government has succeeded for approving ambitious National Mission for the rejuvenation of Saffron cultivation in the state with an investment of Rs.372.18 crore. He said it will help the saffron farmers to double the productivity and production in the state in next four years. Similarly, the Government succeeded to give export status to famous Basmati rice of R.S. Pura belt of Jammu.  He said, a project worth Rs. 540.35 crore has been submitted to the Central Government to improve the quality, productivity and production of indigenous varieties of Basmati.

Lastupdate on : Wed, 16 Mar 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Wed, 16 Mar 2011 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Thu, 17 Mar 2011 00:00:00 IST