Two days Kisan Mela on the theme: Promoting Natural Farming was inaugurated today by Shri Keshav Chandra, IAS, Chief Secretary, A & N Islands at ICAR-CIARI, Port Blair. He also flagged-off the tableau on Natural Farming and inaugurated Modern Goat Unit established by the Division of Animal Science, ICAR-CIARI. Ms Nandini Paliwal, IAS, Commissioner cum Secretary and Shri. B. S. Jaglan, IAS, Secretary, Animal Husbandry & Fisheries, A & N Administration were also present at the occasion. More than 400 farmers from South, Middle & North Andaman are participating in the event.
At the outset Dr. E. B. Chakurkar, Director, CIARI gave a warm welcome and briefed about the institute vision, mission, mandate and its spread befitting the farmers, youth and other stakeholders of A & N islands and Lakshadweep. Chief Secretary visited all the stalls and interacted in person. He expressed his happiness on seeing the technologies which will add revenue to the farmer’s income.
Speaking on the occasion the Chief Guest lauded the efforts of ICAR-CIARI in technology development and transfer in the field of Agriculture, Horticulture, Livestock and Fisheries for furthering the cause of Agriculture in the Islands. He exhorted each and every one present on the day to share the information learned at ICAR-CIARI amongst the other people so that an urge is felt in adoption of Know-how and do-how to the last strata of the farming community. He put forth the idea of having scientific interaction with the Department of Agriculture and Animal Husbandary in the line of Fisheries department to have a synergic effect of efforts. He stressed upon developing brand of A & N Islands so as to get a proper marketing platform. He also felicitated three farmers viz. Smti. Kausalya Mondal, Shri. Shrikanto Majhi & Smti. Kala Devi practicing natural farming and producing bio fertilizers at South Andaman. Dr. Y. Ramakrishna, Principal Scientist and Head KVKs proposed the vote of thanks.
After the inaugural function farmers quiz and scientist farmers interaction was also conducted.