While dairy makes an important contribution to the prosperity of the society and to the well-being and economic activity of the farming families, the Lieutenant governor has said that the government attaches the highest importance to sustained increase in productivity and growth of the dairy sector.
The dairy sector continues to play a vital role in Agriculture GDP and of late, the administration said it has taken “reformative measures” to unlock the huge untapped potential of Animal Husbandry, Agriculture and allied sector.
Fodder production, improving wool quality and addressing issues like inbreeding remain the focus areas of the government.
Recently there has been added focus on Holistic Agriculture Development Program (HADP) under which J&K government is launching Integrated Dairy Development scheme that, according to the Lieutenant Governor, will not only provide social safety net to the farmers but also provide employment and entrepreneurship opportunities to the people
The government has already identified 25 potential projects of agriculture and allied sector and roped in reputed universities and educational institutions to work out strategies for their success.
Earlier this year, the Lieutenant Governor said that this decade in the agriculture and horticulture sector belongs to J&K. He also said that policies through ‘holistic development’ plan have laid the foundations for a ‘sea change’ in the economic growth of J&K.
The government recently stressed that its effort is to make sub-tropical fruit cultivation a multi-faceted business by increasing efficiency of orchards with the help of various interventions like setting up new nurseries and new plant material testing labs.
The government has already introduced Agristack, a collection of technologies and digital databases proposed by the Central Government which focuses on farmers and the agricultural sector.
In order to create Agristack, the central agriculture department finalized the core concept of “India Digital Ecosystem of Agriculture (IDEA)” which lays down a framework for Agristack.
Earlier the J&K government came up with the Aapki Zamin Aapki Nigrani concept towards transparency and digitization of land records.
The different interventions like digitization of land records, availability of expert opinions, farm practices guided by modern technology and techniques besides use of high yielding varieties of agricultural inputs can fructify the dream of doubling the farmers income in near future.
All the measures needed to be taken to make farming a highly remunerative and gainful profession.
The government should also provide technology support to confront weather vagaries.
