Agricultural Universities must script new chapter for farmers' prosperity: Vice Prez Dhankhar

Coimbatore, April 27 (IANS) Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar on Sunday said India’s agricultural universities have a crucial role to play in transforming India’s farmers from mere producers to prosperous entrepreneurs.

Addressing the students of the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University here, Dhankhar said the country’s concern earlier was food security, but now the time has come “to move from food security to farmer prosperity”.

“The farmer has to be prosperous, and this script has to evolve from institutions like yours,” he remarked.

The Vice President urged the students to bridge the gap between lab and land. “It must be a seamless connect. Lab and land must be together, and for this, over 730 Krishi Vigyan Kendras must be vibrant centres of interaction with farmers to educate the farmers. But you have to be the pipeline, you have to be supportive of those Krishi Vigyan Kendras. You must connect with the Krishi Vigyan Kendras, and also the Indian Council of Agriculture Research has over 150 institutions focusing on every aspect of agronomy,” he pointed out.

Dhankhar said that all stakeholders must work in unison for the same purpose, and the curriculum of agricultural universities must align to make the farmer an entrepreneur.

“You must persuade the farmer to rise above just being a producer. You must have courses, formal and informal, whereby farmers, their children get attracted to farming as marketeers and value adders. Institutions like yours have the capacity and potential to be crucibles of change for our agro-farm sector,” he added.

He highlighted the need for research to transform perishable goods such as tomatoes into shelf-stable, high-quality products that can multiply the profitability of farmers. Such steps would give agri-entrepreneurship a great flip, he explained.

Dhankhar pointed out that there are 6,000 agri-startups, but for a country of 1.4 billion, a country that has 100 million farming communities, this is not enough. He highlighted the need to increase awareness about the government’s programmes, such as Farmer Producer Organisations (FPO). A budgetary allocation of Rs one lakh crore has been made to fund various activities to enhance and strengthen infrastructure for the farmer, he added.

He underlined the need to empower the farmer by generating awareness, by telling them that the government cooperative system is very robust. This would help in creating “farmer entrepreneurs”, which is the need of the hour, he added.

He urged the students to play a key role in helping to change the mindset of farmers to help them transform from mere producers to value-adders by starting an industry which is based on their produce.

He also highlighted the progress in India’s agriculture sector, with agri-food products constituting over 11 per cent of the country’s total exports.

--IANS

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