Hon’ble Union Minister for agriculture and farmers welfare Shri Radha Mohan Singh Ji inaugurated the north zone regional farmers fair 2018 in Varanasi in the presence of Shri Surya PratapShahi, Minister of Agriculture, Government of Uttar Pradesh.
The farmer’s fair was organized by ICAR-Indian Institute of Vegetable Research, Varanasi in collaboration with PPV&FRA, New Delhi; Department of Agriculture and Co-operation, Ministry of Agriculture and farmer welfare, Govt. of India, New Delhi; Department of Agriculture, Govt. of Uttar Pradesh and APIV, Varanasi.
Shri Radha Mohan Singh,while addressing the farmers said that the farmers fair are important for gaining the current technological knowledge. He also briefed about the various schemes launched by the Govt. to achieve the target of doubling the farmers income by 2022. He praised the farmers, scientists and other stakeholders engaged in agriculture for safeguarding the food security through green revolution by developing advanced technologies and high yielding good quality seeds. He advocated the farmers to prepare the soil health card for proper management of soil health and to reduce the production cost by 8% to 10%. He highlighted few of the schemes like Pradhan MantriFasalBimaYojna, Operation Green, e-NAM, Gokul Gram Nirman and other schemes related to fishery, beekeeping, horticulture, watershed management, etc. He assured the farmers for MSP of 1.5 times the production cost for most of the crops. He also said that the present Government is committed for betterment of farmers’ livelihood. He also motivated the farmers to create the Farmers Producer Organization to get maximum facilities of Government Scheme and harness better price of their produce.
Shri Surya PratapShahi, Minister of Agriculture, Government of Uttar Pradesh, informed that during Kharif season of this year, total production of cereals were about 192 lakh metric tonnes, which is 12 lakh metric tonnesmore, compared to last year. A total of 80 lakh metric tonne rice and wheat produce were purchased from farmers this year and all related payment to the farmers was done with in week. He also said that Banana in 8 district and Chilli in 7 district of UP has been covered under Pradhan MantriFasalBimaYojna.
DrBijendra Singh, Director, Indian Institute of Vegetable Research in his welcome address highlighted the importance of horticultural crops in doubling the farmers income. He also said that for sustainable agriculture, diversified farming including dairy, beekeeping, poultry, fishery, etc. is the need of the hour. ‘SabjiGyan’ a mobile APP developed by ICAR-IIVR in collaboration with TCS has been launched by Shri Radha Mohan Singh on this occasion. The APP will be useful to vegetable growing farmers where they can simply ask their queries by voice messages. 70,000 farmers have already connected to the APP. The APP can be downloaded from http://iivr.tcsmkrishi.com/mKRISHI_IIVR/.
On this occasion, several farmers at national and state level were awarded with medals for innovative farming and setting the role model for other farmers. Shri Pradumn Singh from Punjab bagged gold medal at national level while silver medal was given to Shri Gauhar Ahmad Gani from Jammu & Kashmir and Shri Hariman Sharma from Himachal Pradesh. The Bronze medal was awarded to Shri Chaman Saini from Rajasthan and Shri Ramesh Zode from Maharashtra. At state level, Gold medal was awarded to Shri Rakesh Singh from Kushinagar, Silver medal to Shri Naresh Sirahi from Meerut and Bronze medal to Sri RamlalVrma of Varanasi . A special award, PanditDeenDayalUpadhyayAntyodayKrushakPuraskarwas awarded to Miss Rupkala Devi from Varanasi for her enormous contribution in family farming. One progressive farmer from Jammu & Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Punjab were also awarded with a regional level award.
On this occasion Shri Anil Rajbhar, Minister for Food Processing, Govt. of UP, Shri Ravindra Jaiswal, MLA, Shri Surendra Singh, MLA, Shri Chet Narayan Singh, MLC, Shri KedarNath Singh, MLC, SmtAparajitaSonkar, Jila Panchayat Adhyaksh and Dr KV Prabhu, Chairman, PPVFRA, New Delhi were present.