Varsity helps farmers double income

Lalit Mohan

Tribune News Service

Dharamsala, January 28

Palampur Agriculture University under an experimental project has been able to double the income of farmers in Dharer panchayat in Baijnath area of Kangra of district. Vice-Chancellor of the university AK Sarial, while talking to The Tribune at Palampur, said that the university had started ‘Farmers First’ programme under the policy of the union government to double the income of farmers by 2022.

With the adoption of new technology developed by the university and many farm based allied avocations, the farmers of Dharer panchayat have reaped rich dividends. One progressive farm lady, Shailja Devi was provided 100 spawn bags and she got bumper mushroom crop. She has sold more than 300 kg of button mushroom and earned around Rs 40,000 in the current season, he said.

The VC further that some farmers got good additional income from sale of eggs, chicks and chicken by rearing Him Samridhi poultry breed of the university. Milk yield has also increased among all those farmers who adopted better animal care and management practices, including use of uromin brick and mineral mixture developed by university in animal feed.

‘Farmers First’ program of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) was sanctioned to the CSK Himachal Pradesh Agriculture University (Directorate of Extension Education) during the year 2016-17. The main objectives of the program were to educate the farmers about improved agricultural production technologies and to increase the productivity. The VC said that 23 off campus training programmes were organised benefitting 1,052 farmers. In addition, 267 farmers were imparted the latest knowhow regarding seed production, mushroom cultivation, bee keeping and off-season vegetable cultivation in various training programmes.

Under this project, on field demonstrations were organized to enhance productivity of crops, vegetables, mushrooms, fodder, dairy, beekeeping, poultry and processing of surplus farm and forest produce. From these demonstrations, an increase in the crop yield to the extent of 23-33 per cent was recorded.

In order to popularize off-season vegetable production in the area, number of demonstrations on various vegetables like cauliflower, peas, radish, palak, cucumber, french bean, bottle gourd, bitter gourd, tomato, capsicum, chilli, ginger and potato were laid out covering 53.26 ha area.

Impressed with the healthy performance of various off season vegetables, the farmers in one of the selected village Kandkosari, have taken up off season vegetable cultivation, VC said.

Under Animal Husbandry component, 25 camps were organized. Proper animal health care, mineral mixture, etc were made available to the farmers for feeding these the lactating animals. From all these interventions, an increase in milk yield to the tune of 1-1.5 liters per day was recorded. Farm women were motivated to process and preserve various surplus farm and forest products like ‘lungru’ pickle and rhododendron juice.

Bumper mushroom crop, better milk yield

• With the adoption of the technology developed by the university and many farm based allied avocations, the farmers have reaped rich dividends. One progressive farm lady, Shailja Devi, was provided 100 spawn bags and she got bumper mushroom crop.
• Some farmers got additional income from sale of eggs, chicks and chickeny.
• Milk yield has also increased among all those farmers who adopted better animal care and management practices.