KVK Samba organises officers Training on Market Intelligence & FPOs

Samba : Krishi Vigyan Kendra Samba, under the administrative control of Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences & Technology of Jammu, Wednesday organized an in-service training programme on Market Intelligence for officers of Agriculture Department, Samba.
The programme was organized under the dynamic leadership of Professor J.P. Sharma, Vice-Chancellor SKUAST-Jammu and under the aegis of Directorate of Extension, SKUAST-J.
Dr. Vinod Gupta, Senior Scientist & Head, KVK Samba welcomed the participants and briefed them about the importance of organizing a training programme on Market Intelligence with the objective of marketing of agriculture produce and formation of Farmer Producer Organisations to achieve efficient marketing. He elaborated that recent hike of Minimum Support Price by Government of India and implementation of electronic national agriculture market (e-NAM) further triggered the issue for creating awareness among farmers on market related issues.
In his address, he stressed upon the market Intelligence system which refers to systematic collection and processing of information from all the relevant sources to ascertain the changing trends in the agricultural marketing environment.
The scientists from the Faculty of Agriculture delivered expert lectures on the latest aspects of agricultural marketing.
Dr. Sudhakar Dwivedi, Associate Professor from Division of Agricultural Economics & ABM discussed the concept of market led extension in agriculture. He suggested participants disseminate the rule of market intelligence in agriculture marketing at grassroots level. He suggested that an efficient Market Intelligence is essential to develop the agriculture sector and It Would help in providing outlets and incentives for increased production.
Dr. Pawan Kumar Sharma, Scientist (Agril. Economics), discussed the modalities of formation and promotion of Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs). The responsibilities of SKUAST-Jammu as Cluster Based Business Organizations (CBBO) and providing agencies such as NABARD, NCDC & NAFED were also discussed in detail. Dr. Anil Bhat, Assistant Professor explained the market information system prevailing in the country and discussed the regulations and acts relevant to agriculture and elaborated the mechanism of Futures Commodity Markets for assuring efficient price for agricultural commodities.
The training programme was attended by 20 participants from the agriculture department who shared the ground level concerns of farmers and discussed the opportunities available to the farmers for realizing better price for their produce. The experts urged the participants to employ the learnings of the programme in their work area and motivate farmers to follow price signals provided by the agriculture market information system at national level.
The other scientists who interacted during the training programme were Dr. Sanjay Khajuria,, Dr. A.K. Sinha, Dr. Saurav Gupta, Dr. Vijay Kumar Sharma, Dr. Shalini Khajuria and Dr. Amit Mahajan of KVK Samba.
At the end of the programme, the formal vote of thanks was presented by Dr. Neerja Sharma.