Agriculture Minister S A Ravindranath wants enhancement in the grants allotted for the implementation of the Agriculture Technology Management Agency (ATMA) at the village-level. This would facilitate the farmers to take up hassle-free agriculture and also help develop human resources.
Inaugurating the orientation-cum-review workshop on ‘Implementation of modified extension reforms scheme during the XI plan’ at the University of Agricultural Sciences in Dharwad on Wednesday he said, time has come to introduce single window system to provide information of various departments under the jurisdiction of zilla panchayat to the farming community.
He said, the lack of co-operation from certain departments had resulted in poor implementation of the scheme. However, the Centre has stressed the need to initiate measures to hold taluk-level meetings regularly and prepare more pro-farmer action plans.
The minister said the officials implementing ATMA scheme have to regularly hold live demonstrations for the farmers and convince them to take up advanced agriculture activities.
Ravindranath stated that along with Karnataka Development Programme (KDP) review meeting, the zilla panchayat should hold ATMA review meet. This would throw light on the challenges faced by the farmers and also keep track record of the scheme. He lamented that the farmers lacked information on several new machines and new technology that have been developed for improving agriculture and called upon the officials of agriculture department to enlighten the farmers on these.
Referring to the ‘Raita Mitra’ Ravindranath said, according to the guidelines of the Union Government, a ‘Farmer Friend’ would be appointed for every two villages and he would be given a remuneration of Rs 4,000 per annum. Raita Mitra would hold talks with the farmers and disseminate need-based information. Ravindranath instructed the agriculture officials to immediately appoint ‘Farmer Friend’ and take up extensive field visit.
A proposal would be submitted to the Union government to increase the remuneration given to ‘Farmer Friend’, he added.
