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Additional 30,000 acres under natural farming Himachal’s target
Agriculture secretary Rakesh Kanwar asks officials to reach out to the farmers with a millet production plan
Himachal Pradesh agriculture secretary Rakesh Kanwar directed the officials in Prakritik Kheti Khushhal Kisan Yojana (PK3Y) to engage with farmers to work on area expansion under natural farming ahead of the kharif season.
He said this should primarily include the existing farmers practising natural farming, whose number has risen to 1.59 lakh farmers in the state. The total area under natural farming in the state is around 50,000 acres so far. The target is to bring an additional 30,000 acres under natural farming in 2023-24.
Chairing a review meeting of the scheme here, Kanwar asked the officials to reach out to the farmers with a millet production plan as well for the kharif season and said they must do necessary arrangements for the same, including timely availability of seeds of millets to the farmers.
He said the officials must organise regular interaction of trained farmers with new farmers for experience sharing for awareness on the natural farming technique. He said the Agricultural Technology Management Agency officials should identify some areas, where people are willing to adopt natural farming on their own and work out a strategy to declare them a natural village, panchayat or at any level.
The secretary said the scheme should aim at assessing the production of the natural apples so that it could be well advertised in advance to see the response among buyers. This would add to the marketing linkages for the natural produce.
State project director Naresh Thakur said around 52,000 farmers have so far been certified for natural products through a self-certification method devised under PK3Y. He said there was a target to certify all the existing farmers.
Thakur asked the officials to devise a method so that the NGOs or farmer-producer organisations can also be brought under certification for agriculture and horticulture produce. “A mechanism should also be there to certify the processed products such as ghee of a desi cow, fruit jam etc for better marketing,” he said.
The review meeting was attended by Agricultural Technology Management Agency project directors from different districts and officials from the state project implementing unit of prakritik kheti yojana in Shimla.
