The Agriculture department today conducted a field demonstration on Laser Land Leveler at Village Dhateryal, Marh in presence of Principal Secretary, Agriculture Production Department, Navin Choudhary.Pertinently, for efficient implementation of Direct Seeding of Rice (DSR) in the field in view of present labour shortage scenario a uniform leveled land is pre-requisite which helps in improving crop yields and input-use efficiency including water and nutrients.Director Agriculture Jammu, Inder Jeet, Chief Agriculture Officer Jammu, F. A. Bhat, SDAO Marh, M. R. Rakwal, AEO Marh, B. L. Goja and other concerned officials were present on the occasion.Principal Secretary evinced keen interest in this innovative technique and impressed upon the officers and field functionaries to promote Laser land Leveling technique on large scale among the farming community and also adopt it on departmental farms. He asked them to ensure availability of such farmer friendly machinery to the farmers on subsidy. He said that the purpose of the demonstration is to sensitize the farmers as well as field officers of the department regarding importance and functioning of Laser guided land leveling machine which ultimately helps in efficient use of farm resources and further enhancing the crop production.
Navin Choudhary called for formation of a task force to facilitate the leveling of SM farms Chinore, Chakrohi and other departmental farms in a phased and time bound manner for better utilization of the available resources. He also directed the officers to fix the targets to conduct more field demonstrations on new and innovative farm machinery available with the department to popularize the new technological interventions among the framers. He suggested formulation of some well defined mechanism so that farmers can utilize the services of departmental machinery in their fields for their benefit.Agriculture Extension Assistant (AEA), S. S. Randhawa apprised the Principal Secretary that Laser Land leveler is helpful in precise and uniform leveling of land, reducing the input cost as well as requirement of irrigation water up to 40%. It was further informed that use of this technique also helps in enhancing the Yield of crop by the way of uniform distribution of seed and fertilizers and better weed control possibility.Besides farmers of the area the officers of department who also got trained about the operational guidelines of Laser Land Leveler (LLL) include AEAs Davender Singh, Deepak Singh and Ravinder Kumar and other field functionaries.