J&K Govt kick-starts 4-month farmers’ orientation programme for holistic agriculture development

JAMMU: The Agriculture Production Department (APD) of Jammu and Kashmir on Monday kick-started the four-month orientation programme for the farmers under a holistic agriculture development programme across the Union Territory.

The Holistic Agriculture Development Plan (HADP) has been rolled out with 29 proposed projects with an outlay of Rs 5,012 crore to be implemented over a period of next five years.

“The department today kick-started the 4-month orientation programme for the farmers under HADP, simultaneously across all the districts of the UT,” additional chief secretary, APD, Atal Dulloo told reporters here.

He said that the orientation programme was held across 264 venues engaging close to 14,000 farmers across the Union Territory on the first day of the programme.

“The programme shall be held on first three days of every week. The mammoth exercise beginning from today shall be completed in 4 months, which will cover all the panchayats of the all the districts and shall culminate on 31st August 2023,” Dulloo said.

He said that during the programme an exhaustive district specific calendar has been issued by the government.

“An innovative tool of describing the schemes using short films has been put in place. A total of 49 videos of schemes under HADP and other centrally-sponsored schemes were shown across the venues in J&K,” the additional chief secretary said.

“Besides this question answer session after each screening session of videos was held to clear the doubt of farmers,” he said.

For skill development of the farmers, the participants were apprised about the DAKSH KISAN- the learning management system developed by APD, where 118 skilling courses as per the agro-climatic zones of the UT are available for free. (PTI)