Efforts on to make agriculture attractive – Ben Yanthan

Dimapur, Feb. 15 (EMN): Director of Agriculture, M Ben Yanthan, informed that the department is making an all-out effort to make agriculture attractive to rural communities especially rural youth and educated unemployed in order to achieve self-sufficiency and gradually halt rural to urban migrations. He exuded confidence that mechanisation coupled with modern farming techniques including value addition with marketing linkages would open up vistas of opportunity towards meeting the challenge.

Yanthan stated this during a one-day coordination meeting of agriculture officers held in the conference hall of its directorate in Kohima on Tuesday. He stated that agriculture continues to be the main source of livelihood for the people of the state although the dependency for employment in agriculture and allied activities are on the decline.

Yanthan reminded that the last few seasons have not been easy for farmers because of the pandemic coupled with drought-like situation and pest and disease incidence, the worst being fall army worm (Faw) in maize since May 2019. He added that despite the pandemic during the last few years, the Agriculture department has been at the forefront in the development of agriculture in the state and with the added challenges of creating employment opportunities for the post-Covid returnees. He said the department is continuously giving extra effort in effective implementation of various centrally and state sponsored schemes for timely delivery of the necessary advisories and agriculture inputs to the farmers.

As the state government had declared drought of moderate nature with effect from September 15, 2021, Yanthan stated that the worst is not over following unprecedented rain, hailstorms and extreme cold all over the state since January which would equally affect the kharif crops and its agronomic practices. He, therefore, suggested that maple Kharif preparedness has to be worked out seriously by all the stakeholders to mitigate any eventualities.

With the recent setting up of soil testing laboratories in district headquarters and 74 blocks by the Soil and Water Conservation department as well as the automatic weather forecasting stations, he urged the officers to disseminate the advantage and beneficial usages to the farmers to enable them prepare for various agricultural operations and control measures against pest and diseases. Besides, he also urged to rope in Atma personnel in organising need based pre-kharif awareness campaigns at the block or farm school level with technical training on specific crops.