Agriculture department officials at the grassroots level should make farmers in their village/area adopt, and acclimatise to, new technologies that are suitable for their crops, said Regional Agricultural Research Station’s(ARS) Nandyal head and Associate Director of Research N.C. Venkateswarlu.
Inaugurating a day-long capacity building seminar for agriculture extension officers, mandal level officers of various line departments here on Tuesday at the Udyan Bhavan, Mr. Venkateswarlu said that the ARS at Rekulakunta in Anantapur and Nandyal had done some wonderful work on new varieties of jowar, cotton and other millet seeds.
Appreciating the work done by principal scientist at ARS Rekulakunta B. Sahadeva Reddy, Mr. Venkateswarlu said the scientist had led a team of researchers who worked on various dryland crops in Kurnool and Anantapur districts and had suggested several soil conservation methods that improved the productivity.
“All such technologies must be properly understood by extension officers and they must suggest the right crop for the right soil and at the right time, which is the key to improving the incomes of farmers,” he pointed out.
Senior scientist C.V. Chandramohan Reddy gave a perspective on millets production, how it could be remunerative for small farmers by taking up post-harvest processing.
Mr. Sahadeva Reddy and others gave individual PowerPoint presentations to explain the impact of climate change and how the vagaries of nature were impacting productivity. Just a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase in average temperature could wreak havoc on many farmers and people could be pushed into poverty as per the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predictions.
Joint Director of Agriculture P.L. Varalakshmi explained the zero-based natural farming initiative of the State government and promised to give training to Rythu Bharosa Kendra wise very soon.
