Empowering farmers must to attract innovative minds towards agriculture: Dir Agri(K)

Srinagar: Director Agriculture Kashmir Altaf Aijaz Andrabi Saturday said financial empowerment of farmers is a must to attract young innovative minds towards the Agriculture sector.
This was stated by the Director in a meeting he chaired here to review the overall implementation of various centrally-sponsored schemes and flagship programmes under agriculture sector in Kashmir division.
The Director listed a series of measures to be taken by the department for efficient implementation of different projects. He stressed for the prompt intervention by the department for improvement in the work culture. He asked the officers to prepare fortnightly and monthly plans for achieving set targets to ensure efficient services to the farmers.
Calling for close monitoring of schemes especially flagship programmes, Andrabi said increasing the frequency of awareness deliberations would yield positive results in the farming sector.
Describing entrepreneurship in the farming sector as the need of the hour, Director Agriculture asked the officers to make all possible efforts to attract young and innovative minds towards the farming sector.
A number of measures were discussed in the meeting including punctuality in the field offices, Adhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System (AEBAS) monitoring, holding awareness programmes, distribution of soil health cards, distribution of agriculture inputs, review of seed village programmes, speedy expenditure of available funds only through DBT mode, close monitoring of different field crops, climate change resilient programme, and organic farming.
The meeting was attended by Joint Director Agriculture Extension Choudhary Mohhamad Iqbal, Joint Director Inputs Deepak Kumar Kuchroo, Joint Director Engineering Javed Iqbal Lone, Project Coordinator Mushroom Abhinash Chander Peer, all Chief Agriculture Officers and other concerned.