Young farmers with new ideas to be given chance:Organiser

Tribune News Service

CHANDIGARH, November 22

During the five-day exchange prorgamme of the International Farm Youth Exchange (IFYE) various issues related to agricultural environment and technology were discussed here over the past four days.

IFYE started on Thursday with farmers from 10 countries attending the event. Apart from India, farmers from USA, Holland, Thailand, Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea, New Zealand, Australia and Japan were attending.

Captain RPS Gill, the chief orgainser of the exchange programme, said that they would encourage young farmers to become part of the IFYE, so that they could learn from the experiences of others. He said the Indian farmers where land holding was shrinking with time, could learn a lot from the farmers of Taiwan and South Korea, where intensive farming in done at small farms.

He said that they would select only those young farmers for this programme who were doing farming and ready to experiment with the new ideas. He said this year, they had selected a young farmer from Agra, who would spend time in the United States of America.

Alen Earl Lambert, national project director of IFYE in the USA, said the way the population of the world was growing, one had to be more efficient when it came to agriculture. “The traditional way of farming will not be able to solve the food crisis,” he said.

Apart from the exchange of farmers’ experiences, a presentation on falling water table in Punjab was also given.

The farmers who are attending the programme also visited Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, on Sunday.

The International Farm youth Exchange programme started in 1948.