Seven new agricultural training centers to come up in State

State government to establish agricultural training centres in seven districts, focusing on capacity building, technology, and value addition for farmers.

The State government will start new agricultural training centres in seven districts in the State this year.

Agriculture Minister N. Chaluvarayaswamy has said that these centres will come up in the newly carved out districts of Vijayanagar and Yadgir and Gadag, Kolar, Chamarajanagar, Ramanagara and Udupi.

These centres will organise training sessions for farmers to ensure higher capacity building. Apart from emerging technologies, farmers will be trained in reducing cost of cultivation, reducing inputs, minimal processing, drying and storing of produce, modern and indigenous post-harvest technologies, value addition for crops and marketing of produce. They will also be trained in allied activities like farming, animal care and vermi-compost making and others.

The Minister was speaking to officers at a divisional-level meeting of officers of Agriculture and Watershed Development departments at the Suvarna Soudha in Belagavi on Wednesday.

He asked officers to lay emphasis on quality control while organising training sessions. He asked them to ensure that all laboratories working under the department are affiliated to the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL). He said that the government will take steps to upgrade the parasite testing laboratory in Bailhongal.

The Minister said that he has instructed officers to adopt a new technology in the production of Trichogramma chilonis which is used in pest control in sugarcane. Adequate quantity would be produced and distributed to farmers in six months, he added.

He said that the State government will focus on local production of seeds. Officers should strive to produce all seeds required by farmers in a district in their own district as far as possible. That could be done in the fields of progressive farmers or in State-run seed production centres, he added.