Curtains came down on Sunday on the four-day Krishi Mela, organised by University of Agricultural Sciences -Bengaluru, drawing a large number of visitors to the Gandhi Krishi Vijnan Kendra campus.
Participating in the valedictory of the event, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said that the Centre has to give prominence to the agriculture sector as a majority of the country's population is dependent on agriculture. Listing out his government's achievements in protecting the interests of farmers, he said that while governments of Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh failed to bail farmers out of crisis, the Karnataka government offered a good price when the crops failed. He said that support price was given to buy tur, ragi, paddy and sugarcane. Efforts should be made to make farmers self-reliant by distributing quality seeds and offering good support price when prices crash, said Mr. Siddaramaiah, who gave away awards to the best performing farmers.
Among those who received awards included Omkarmurthy from Hassan, Sharadamma from Chikkaballpura and Manjunath from Bengaluru Rural.
Agriculture Minister Krishnabyre Gowda was present at the event.
