Asian countries Institutes responds for collaborative works in agriculture: Dr Ranjan

IMPHAL, March 20: Institutes of some Asian countries including Japan and Vietnam have responded to the proposal for collaborative works in terms of technology transfer and research in the agriculture sector.

This was disclosed by the Union minister of state for External affairs and Education Dr RK Ranjan Singh informed this while addressing a concluding function of a 3-day International Conference on ‘Natural farming for Revitalizing Environment and Resilient Agriculture’ at the picturesque Central Agricultural University (CAU) premises near here on Sunday.

He said he started to approach such initiatives through the External affairs mission office following valuable suggestions from the concerned officials as the experts are giving more focus on research and innovative technologies.

Stating that today, conventional farming is a common method of farming using external inputs and use of chemicals and fertilizers giving more emphasis on yield maximization rather than yield optimization leading to soil fatigue, high cost of production, declining factor productivity and causing imbalance in the ecosystem and lead to high dependency of the farmers on the market, he said. Natural farming is considered as a cost- effective farming suitable for livelihood of large number of farmers and rural development.

On the other hand Dy Director General (Natural Resource Management) Dr Suresh Kumar Chaudhari of ICAR New Delhi stated that altogether 310 districts out of the total districts in the country are highly vulnerable to climatic change and one of the solutions to this could be natural farming because it provides all possible resilient system to the agriculture.

In Manipur, Chandel, Senapati and Ukhrul are vulnerable to moisture stress in crops growth and development. Similarly there are four districts each in Meghalaya and Mizoram, three districts each in Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Sikkim while one district in Tripura, he added. So these districts require priority solutions, priority investments and natural farming solutions, he said. Vice-Chancellors Dr Anupam Mishra and Dr BR Kamboj also spoke on the occasion.

Meanwhile Dean Dr Indira who is also the convenor of the conference said a lot of important recommendations with more focus on revitalising environment and improvement of soil microorganism with innovative technologies by using cow based natural farming were taken during the conference. A total of 8 technical sessions attended eminent scholars from different disciplines and Institutes of repute were organised wherein 153 research papers including oral and poster presentations were accommodated.

Total 8 key note papers and 24 lead lectures were delivered by researchers, 16 from India, 3 from Thailand, 2 from Bangladesh, one each from Finland, Germany and USA.