Chief Minister V. Narayanasamy on Wednesday said that the Puducherry government was committed to promoting organic farming and incentives were provided to farmers to achieve the goal.
The Chief Minister was inaugurating a garden of nutrition-rich plants at the bio-village maintained by M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation at Pillayarkuppam.
He said while in other States each farmer taking up organic farming got an incentive of ₹10,000 per hectare, in Puducherry it was ₹10,000 an acre, which worked out to ₹25,000 per hectare.
Dairy farming
The government had taken steps to promote dairy farming as the demand for milk was higher than production in Puducherry. Against a daily requirement of 1.25 lakh litres of milk, the production was only around 50,000 litres and hence the need to boost dairy farming.
Mr. Narayanasamy said that to achieve the goal, the government had come out with a scheme to provide milch animals to women’s self-help groups and six thousand animals would be distributed this year under the scheme. Organic farming was a committed goal of Puducherry government and the role played by the Foundation was laudable in promoting it. He said that Puducherry had been marching ahead in various other developmental projects.
In a video message, eminent agricultural scientist Prof. Swaminathan emphasised on the five aspects of nutrition that were required. “We have to address calorie deficiency, protein malnutrition, micro nutrient deficiency, water and sanitation and focus on nutrition awareness. A combination of all these can show a path to ‘nutrition security’.” It would a fitting tribute to Mahatma Gandhi on his 150th birth anniversary, he said.
Anil Kumar, executive director of MSSRF. stressed on the importance of scientific approaches in development. The bio-village, in fact, signified life in a holistic manner. “Science plays a part in providing solutions of how we can carry on agriculture and related activities to achieve better quality of nutrition and life while safeguarding the environment that we are in,” he added.
