Panaji: February 13, 2016 …. Agriculture should be considered as an enterprise asserted Chief Minister, Shri Laxmikant Parsekar and urged the educated youths to take to farming in a big way.
Speaking at the day-long State Level Conference for farmers and entrepreneurs in the agricultural sector on the theme “Value Addition in Agriculture for better Marketing” organized by Directorate of Agriculture at Ravindra Bhavan, Margao today, Shri Parsekar urged the agriculturists to acquire the required knowledge and expertise to increase the durability, adding value apart from fetching high returns to their produce.
Shri Parsekar stressed the need to make optimum use of the mechanized and hi-tech technical know-how for a higher yield and to get high returns from the produce.
The Chief Minister reiterated the government’s commitment to bring more land under agriculture and provide the necessary impetus to the activity by providing the required support, be it financial assistance, technical know-how, support prices to various crops/fruits. These initiatives are to ensure that agriculture is carried out in a sustained manner, he remarked.
The Union MoS, Shri Mohan Bhai Kundariya speaking on the occasion underscored the need and importance to go for organic farming and pointed out the adverse effects on humanities of fertilizer and pesticides.
Emphasizing the need to have krishi melas to educated and to make the farmers aware of the latest technological advances in the sector to enable them to get a higher yield and to add value to their produce to earn more returns the Union MoS said all initiatives of encouraging and motivating the farmers should be carried out at the place of the actual activity.
Shri Kundariya also specially thanked the people of Goa for their wholehearted support, generous contribution and helping hand provided by adopting a village in his hometown in Gujarat during the 2001 earthquake.
Minister for Agriculture, Shri Ramesh Tawadkar speaking on the occasion said that the agricultural sector has the potential to provide gainful employment opportunity to 8-10 thousand youths. Youths should look to agriculture as an industry and take to agriculture, he added.
He said government is making all efforts in the direction of making Goa self-reliant for all its vegetable and flower requirements. Goa, he said, has for the first exported around 17 tons of chillies to the neighbouring state of Belgavi.
He urged the farmers to take maximum benefits of this day-long conference to learn the concept of adding value and marketing their produce to increase their margin of profit. This Government has provided the required impetus to agriculture, he remarked.
Shri M.P. Singh, Director, ICAR also spoke on the occasion.
Earlier, the Union MoS for Agriculture, Shri Mohan Bhai Kundariya launched the web portal of the Agriculture Department wherein all the activities and service related forms be submitted including effecting payments online. Presently 11 services are made online while the other 60 services will be made in line at the earliest.
Shri Satyawan Dessai presented a representation to Shri Kundariya on three specific demands, i.e to increase the funding pattern to 90:10; permission to utilize the amount given to procure the laboratory equipment for the building as well as procuring equipment within the allocated amount and increasing the project cost funding to 100% under RIY.
Shri Ulhas B. Kakode, Director of Agriculture welcomed while Shri Nelson Figueiredo, Dy. Director proposed the vote of thanks.
Top Scientists from ICAR, experts in the field of agriculture will guide and provide the required expertise to the farmers along with interactive session on the theme.
