Principal Secretary Agriculture, Horticulture, Animal and Sheep Husbandry, Navin Kumar Choudhary, today visited Baramulla where he chaired a meeting with the concerned officers and had a holistic review of agriculture and allied sectors. Deputy Commissioner Baramulla, Dr G N Itoo, presented a detailed account of progress cum performance recorded in various sectors through a power point presentation. He said that district has achieved a substantial progress in production as well as in productivity of some major food crops. He highlighted some issues and bottlenecks in these sectors and sought his personal intervention in resolving these issues in a time bound manner.After taking comprehensive review, Principal Secretary appreciated the role of district administration for achieving marvelous performance in these sectors. He stressed for exploring new and scientific farming techniques for value addition of agricultural products adding that adoption of such measures will help to improve the condition of farmers by getting fair and better remunerative price for their produce. He also directed the DC to identify land for establishing a farmers’ market so that more and more marketing avenues are created.Terming the adoption of ‘Organic Farming’ vital for sustainable agriculture, Navin Kumar stressed for disseminating awareness among the farmers about such farming practices and said that adoption of such practices will create more and more livelihood opportunities.
He also reiterated government’s commitment for making farmers ‘self reliant’ under the recently launched Atmanirbhar programme, a centrally sponsored programme to make India a self reliant nation. Meanwhile, Principal Secretary announced 02 refrigeration vans for transportation and the subsequent marketing of fresh vegetables and said that every possibility should be explored for farmers’ welfare.Navin Kumar also emphasized upon the concerned officers to conduct field visits in order to get proper feedback from farmers at ground level. He also directed to work with utmost zeal and enthusiasm so that the fruits of various welfare programmes reaches to the beneficiaries in a viable manner. He further directed to establish more and more sheep, dairy and poultry units and urged the unemployed youth to come forward and adopt these avenues as means of their livelihood.Meanwhile, Navin Kumar e-inaugurated several projects in agriculture sector which included Hi-tech Poly green House, Green house, Fisheries Hut and High Altitude Seed testing lab.Director Agriculture, Director Horticulture, Director Animal Husbandry, Director Sericulture, Director fisheries, Joint director planning, district and sectoral officers among other concerned officers were present on the occasion.Later, Principal Secretary met several delegations belonging to farming community who raised their issues and demands which included waiving of KCC loans, continuation of MIS scheme, regulation of pesticides and fertilizers etc. Principal Secretary had a patient hearing and assured that all the issues and demands shall be redressed in a time bound manner.