Poonam Malakondaiah, Principal Secretary, Agriculture, Telangana government, has suggested developing 100 model villages in Telangana to promote integrated farming to help small and marginalised farmers.
Addressing the World Food Day celebrations at Prof. Jaya Shankar Agricultural University here on Thursday, she said that integrated farming would help farmers to take up dairy farming, fisheries, sericulture and other allied activities along with regular farming to boost their earnings.
She suggested the varsity should adopt 100 villages to promote this to help small and marginal farmers. She reminded that the same experiment was successful in production of vegetables taken up under ‘Mana Vooru Mana Kooragayalu’ programme by the marketing and horticulture departments.
Ms. Malakondaiah also suggested to the university to offer specialised certificate courses for young farmers so that they can improve productivity and also benefit from changing farming patterns. Their success would also spread positivity in the community and lead to adoption of better practices.
She asked the students to get involved in community service and said developing community radios was one of the methods of getting involved in the service. Praveen Rao, Registrar, was also present.
