Haryana Agriculture Minister urges shift to natural farming, distributes 480 spray pumps to Yamunanagar farmers
Registration on ‘Meri Fasal Mera Byora’ portal mandatory to receive a spray pump, says minister
The Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Department, under the Agricultural Technology Management Agency (ATMA), organised a district-level Scheduled Caste Farmers’ Training Camp at Panchayat Bhawan, Yamunanagar.
The chief guest of the programme, Haryana’s Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister, Shyam Singh Rana, distributed 480 spray pumps free of cost to Scheduled Caste farmers.
“Special steps are being taken by the Central and State governments to make agriculture advanced and disease-free,” said Rana.
He said that farmers were destroying the fertility of their land by using excessive chemical fertilisers and pesticides to achieve higher yields. He added that the fertility of the soil was being adversely affected due to the excessive use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides.
“Today, we need to promote natural farming so that we can give poison-free land to our future generations. We must move towards natural farming because our food is becoming increasingly contaminated, which is causing serious diseases,” he said.
He further said that the government was making continuous efforts to increase farmers’ income and promote modern agricultural techniques.
The Agriculture Minister said that modern spray pumps were extremely useful for the even and effective spraying of pesticides and nutrients on crops. He added that this would help farmers achieve better production at lower costs and save time.
He appealed to farmers to make maximum use of advanced agricultural equipment and take advantage of the department’s schemes.
Dr Aditya Pratap Dabas, deputy director of Agriculture, Yamunanagar, said that under the ATMA project, the department distributed 80 battery-operated spray pumps and 400 other spray pumps free of cost to farmers belonging to the Scheduled Caste category across the blocks of the district.
He said that registration on the ‘Meri Fasal Mera Byora’ portal was mandatory to receive a spray pump. He provided detailed information about the schemes being run in the interest of farmers and said that grants were being provided to eligible farmers as per the prescribed procedure.
On the occasion, Agriculture Department officials, including Ajay Kumar, Bal Mukund Kaushik, Dr Vineet Kumar Jain and Harish Pandey, along with other officers and employees, were also present.
