Advisor to Lieutenant Governor, Farooq Khan, today had an exhaustive field visit to inspect the high tech interventions being implemented in the field of Agriculture.Advisor was accompanied by Director Agriculture, Jammu, K K Sharma, Director Horticulture, Ram Sevak, Joint Director Agriculture (Inputs), Joint Director (Apiculture & Mushroom), Agriculture Chemist, Chief Agriculture Officer Jammu, Chief Horticulture Officer Jammu besides other officers and field functionaries of Agriculture and Horticulture departments.Advisor inspected the Sanik farm at Babliana spread over an area of 68 kanal where he took stock of functioning of Naturally Ventilated Poly Green House (NVPGH) developed by a private agriculture entrepreneur, S S Wazir, with active support of Department of Agriculture Jammu under CAPEX, 2019-20.Advisor, while interacting with a group of farmers on the occasion, stressed on promotion of protected cultivation which helps in production of disease free quality seedlings of high value vegetables and possesses potential of increasing the farm income many fold. He called upon the farmers to come forward and take advantage of various welfare schemes launched by the government like PMFBY, KCC, High Density plantation and related programs.
Farooq Khan appreciated that several educated youth are coming forward to adopt farming as full time profession providing employment to other unemployed youth as well.Advisor directed the officers of Agriculture and Horticulture departments to develop and disperse cost effective farming technology among the farmers. He also asked for promoting and encouraging organic farming on cluster basis.Director informed the Advisor that the department is earnestly working towards motivating the farmers to go for production of exotic and high value vegetables like Seedless Cucumber, Tomato, Red and Yellow Bell peppers under protected and controlled conditions to get round the year production with high returns. He assured that soon the process of registering of Sanik Farm under PGS system will be initiated to develop the farm on organic lines.Later at Badyal Brahmana, Advisor visited the high tech Mushroom unit of a private entrepreneur, Raman Gupta, established with technical guidance of Agriculture, Department. He was apprised that this unit consists of 10 cropping rooms of 3500 bags capacity each. He also visited different units of the venture including Automatic Pasteurized Mushroom Compost making plant. He was informed that the Mushroom unit has provided employment to 35 persons.Advisor instructed the officers to facilitate agri entrepreneurs in terms of technical knowhow, packaging, branding and marketing.Meanwhile, Advisor also inspected the integrated farming model which included cultivation of fruit, forest and flowering plants besides 6 Irrigation borewells.