The progressive farmers of Jammu division today participated in an interactive session with Prime Minister, Narendra Modi through video-conferencing. The facility was arranged by the Department of Agriculture, Jammu at the Conference Hall of Krishi Bhawan here.The farmers from 600 KVKs, Common Service Centres (CSCs), NIC Centres and Directorates of Agriculture across the country participated in the programme and shared their experiences with the Prime Minister.While addressing the farmers through video-conferencing, the Prime Minister said that cutting input cost, fair price for crops, preventing the produce from rottening and creating alternate sources of income are the four key areas for raising farm income.During the interactive session, 24 farmers hailing from nine states of the country narrated their success stories and spoke about how they got benefitted from different government schemes on crop insurance, soil health, micro-irrigation, electronic national agriculture market and farm mechanization.Director Agriculture, Jammu H.K Razdan also interacted with the farmers after the session. Joint Director of Agriculture Extension R.L Bhagat, I/C Deputy Director Central Jagmohan Bhat, I/C Chief Agriculture Officer, Jammu Anil Arora, Agriculture Economist K.K Sharma, Agriculture Information Officer J.C Raina, SDAO Marh R.S Jamwal, SDAO RS Pura Roshan Lal besides other officers and field functionaries participated.
Speaking on the occasion, Director Agriculture said that the use of Soil Health Cards helps in reducing the consumption of chemical fertilizers by 20% along with narrowing the wide NPK ratio to the normally recommended level of 4:2:1. The implementation of various farmers’ welfare schemes including PMKSY, PMFBY, KCC, Parmparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY), Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY) will help to modernize the agriculture in our state as well.S. Tajinder Singh, Choudhary Dev Raj, Kulbhushan Khajuria, Rajinder Sharma, Jagdev Singh, Chamail Singh, Bansi Lal, Jaswant Singh and Biru Ram were among the progressive farmers who shared their achievements and success stories. The farmers also spoke about various problems and difficulties of the farm sector including insufficient availability of agriculture implements and machinery, bore-wells, rejuvenation of ponds, border firing, monkey manace, and improvement in the irrigation water facilities.Razdan advised the farmers to grow low water requiring plants, crops, pulses and to conserve the soil and moisture in the un-irrigated and kandi belt areas of Jammu. He directed the field functionaries to register the applications for issuance of agriculture machinery and equipments on first-come-first-serve basis. The farmers on the occasion got an opportunity to learn from the success stories of the progressive farmers from the other states.