KOHIMA, JUNE 12 (MExN): The Department of Agriculture organised a one day training and co-ordination meeting at the Directorate of Agriculture conference hall on June 12.
Addressing the training programme, Director of Agriculture, M Ben Yanthan stated that time has come to review, rethink, revitalise and intervene both in policy and execution perspectives. Post COVlD-19 Pandemic, people are expecting our department to play a major role in the development of economy of the State including livelihood and employment issues, he said.
Yanthan also said despite their efforts, hard work and the resources available, there seems to be no tangible results to be quantified and documented on a large scale. The contribution of Agriculture and Allied Sectors in the GSDP (Gross State Domestic Product) is also gradually declining, he noted.
“May be our interventions might have been too little or fragmented to see visible results,” he added. Other reasons, he said, could be because of unresponsiveness or progressive farmers constrained by geo-physical limitations with limited natural resources. It may also be absence of proper and effective monitoring and evaluation mechanism leading to poor projection of the results, he added.
Yanthan further stated that with the new objectives and challenges, the department will adopt a convergence approach, to their present activities of clusters and schemes by creating compulsorily a 'Model Farming Village or Area', one in each District.
Furthermore, need-based and result-orientated activities or schemes will be implemented in the other villages or farms in convergence mode. This, he stated is expected to lead to higher production and productivity of food grains and area expansion, fulfilling the twin objectives of food and nutritional security and making farming commercially attractive especially for the educated Youths. This will also bolster link between farming and other sectors of the economy, Yanthan said.
He further called upon farmers to change their mind set by way of showing the right technologies so as to make farming more remunerative. It is time to sit together, discuss, plan out strategies and put right things into implementation on the ground, he stressed.
He also encouraged the agriculture officials to rededicate themselves and be a part of the mission to reach the target vision of ‘Food for All’ by 2025 to ensure food security.
Yanthan stressed on the need to improve land productivity and consequently sufficient food grain production through sustainable and scientific management practices. He also noted that the new Agriculture produce and Livestock Model Act (Promotion and Felicitation) has already been approved and notified by the Government of Nagaland. With this, the Contract Farming Act (promotion and felicitation) is under process.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, he called upon agriculture experts to encourage and convince farmers to adopt the right technology, so that sufficient agriculture production is made available for trade and marketing.
The Director also released the 1st edition of 2020 Success Stories on Agriculture Mechanisation (SMAM). Training on record keeping, accounting and audit related matters was also presented by Haridasan TK, Senior AO, AG Nagaland.
The program was chaired by Joint Director of Agriculture, B Nyenghong Phom.
