Advisor to Governor, K Skandan Wednesday asked the agriculture experts to work on increasing the reach of farm mechanisation to boost farmers’ income.
Addressing at the concluding session of one-day workshop on’Small farm Agriculture Production and Post Production Mechanization’ atSher-e-Kashmir University of Sciences and Technology (SKUAST-K) here, theadvisor, according to an official spokesperson, asked the agriculture expertsto work on Change Management in order to change the mindset of farmers andconvince them to use modern farming technologies.
The workshop was organised by Indian Council of AgricultureResearch (ICAR) in collaboration with SKUAST-K for ‘Regional Committee Zone-I’which include J&K, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. The day-long workshopwas also attended by agriculture university heads, experts, scientists,scholars and students, and heads of several business organisations.
The advisor, in his speech, exhorted that there is needeither to implement the vast agriculture tools or whether the existing toolsare obsolete or have flexibility to get desired results in agricultureproduction, besides, increasing the reach of farm mechanization to small andmarginal farmers and promote farm mechanization among the stakeholders.
Highlighting the role of agriculture universities, AdvisorSkandan said the farmers should be made aware about the vital aspects of boththe technologies and change so as to boost farmers’ income. He also suggestedfor micro level steps like creating farmer oriented mobile apps where theywould be provided information snippets of benefits of farm technology.
He also urged business organisations to come up with farmbased centres where the farmers would be showcased with better technologies soas to convince the farmers to buy modern technology, adding these servicecentres would eventually become hub of interaction and development.
Vice Chancellor SKUAST-K, Prof Nazeer Ahmed highlightedthe importance and role of mechanizationin farm sector and emphasized on development of farm machines and equipments todouble the farmers’ income.
Assistant Director-General (Engineering), ICAR, KK Singhgave general overview of mechanization in three north western Himalayan statesof J&K, Uttarakhand and HP. He also gave information of various schemesbeing implemented by GoI in these three states besides diversification andintensification in agriculture by the year 2022 for doubling the farmers’income. Later, Advisor released booklet titled “TransferableTechnologies”.