Krushi Odisha 2nd day celebrates Cooperation and Banking Day

‘Krushi Odisha’, the annual flagship five-day exhibition cum agri fair organized by Odisha government's Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Empowerment in collaboration with FICCI is being held from 20-24 January 2020 at Janata Maidan, Bhubaneswar. The mega program envisages leading farmers to profitability. Krushi Odisha takes into consideration various aspects of agriculture including farm income, implements, modern technology in farming, financial assistance to farmers and capacity building. The second day of Krushi Odisha is being celebrated as Cooperation and Banking Day.

A user guide as well a website on e-Licensing for farmers was launched by the government on the second day. 

Chief Guest of the occasion, Ranendra Pratap Swain, Minister for Food Supplies & Consumer Welfare, Co-operation quoted father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi while addressing the gathering. He said that Gandhiji was always talking about empowering the farmers. He then went on to say that discussions on farmer suicide mitigation and decreasing dependence on imports for potato and onions should be made at forums like Krushi Odisha. He extended the full support of his department towards farmer welfare. He also said that while farmers over the country are facing losses, the farmers in Odisha are seeing an upward trend in their income and lifestyle thanks to the farmer-friendly policies of the state government.

The day consisted of two seminars and two pathshalas running parallel from 10 AM to 1 PM and 2-5 PM respectively. The first seminar of the day was on Climate Smart Technology and Water Resources Management for Improved Productivity in Agriculture. The session was moderated by Tapan Padhy- Director of Water and Forestry Programme, RCDC.

JK Rath Chairman, FICCI MSME Committee, Odisha, introduced the panel to the audience which included Tapan Padhy- Director of Water and Forestry Programme, RCDC, Anjan Mandal Chief of Sales and Marketing SkyMet Weather, Dr. Sangita Ladha, VP Marketing and Business Development, Jain Irrigation and Pushpendra Johari, Sr. VP, RMSI Noida.

Tapan Padhy- Director of Water and Forestry Programme, RCDC suggested the ways and means of carrying out sustainable agriculture in the time of climate change. Similarly, Anjan Mandal, Chief of Sales and Marketing, SkyMet Weather focused on forecasting technologies for agriculture supply chain management. He elaborated on the SkyMitra app developed by SkyMet weather which helps in giving local farmers advance weather forecast in seven languages like English, Hindi, Gujrati, Marathi, Telugu, Odia and Punjabi. He also informed that SkyMet has put up than 7000 Automated Weather Stations (AWS) across the country while over 100 AWS are located in Odisha in Bhadrak, Balasore and Ganjam districts.

Dr. Sangita Ladha, VP Marketing and Business Development, Jain Irrigation is an M.Tech from IIT Kharagpur. She delved on the issues of greenhouse technology and precision farming. Through a video, she showcased how her team planted a grapevine across 600 hectares of desert in Israel by using drip irrigation methods.

The first pathshala of the day was on Farm Mechanization & Micro Irrigation for Minimizing Production Cost. The pathshala laid stress on the fact that in order to increase production, we have to increase usage of farm machine tools from the existing 40 percent to a more advanced 90 percent like in the US.

The second pathshala of the day focused on Risk in Agriculture- Management, and Mitigation. The pathshala educated the farmers on mitigation of problems faced by them right from sowing seeds to harvesting their crops and the insurance policy of Odisha government.