ICAR envisions food sufficiency for Northeast
Source: Hueiyen News Service
Barapani (Umiam), December 22, 2013:
With the bio-rich northeast being largely dependent on other parts of the country to meet its growing demand for food, theIndian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) for North Eastern Hill Region here has laid emphasis on making the region self-sufficient in food production in the coming years.
"Market-driven smart agriculture has to be realistically pursued," director S V Ngachan said at an event called the 'Agri-Business Camp' at the ICAR complex here on Saturday.
He stressed on monitoring of production quality and environment-friendly agriculture even as he underscored the need for convergence of financial institutions, policy makers, farmers and scientists for collectively meeting the challenges in making the region self sufficient in food production.
"The region should be able to contribute to the food basket of not only the country but outside also as it is surrounded by five different countries," he said.
Deputy general manager of the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), M T Wankhede stressed on creation of godowns and warehouses in the rural areas for storage.
He informed that the central government has provided the NABARD with Rs 5000 crore for motivating the various state governments in setting up storage units at 33.33 per cent subsidy.
Wankhede also said that the NABARD has set up one lakh 'Farmers' Clubs' throughout the country in order to ensure the transfer of technology from 'laboratories to fields'.
Head of the department of crop improvement, ICAR, NS Azad Thakur, while pointing out that rice is the staple crop in the northeast, emphasized on commercialization of the technologies developed by the ICAR throughout the region.
M Datta of the ICAR's Tripura Centre said that the "next Green Revolution" should ideally emanate out of the northeastern region.
Senior scientist A Pattanayak said the aim of the camp was to make entrepreneurs in the region aware of the technologies built by the ICAR, so that the same could be commercialized at reasonable price for the benefit of farmers of the region.
Several stakeholders attended the camp, where the products of the latest ICAR technology were on exhibition.