The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) has come forward to help in improving productivity of certain crops in three regions of Andhra Pradesh. It has expressed its willingness to train select group of farmers and officials of the Agriculture Department on best practices for this.
The FAO, in coordination with the State Agriculture Department, will be charting out an action plan to take up the training programme in two districts each of the three regions on a pilot basis from the ensuing kharif.
The programme will be designed to suit the climatic conditions and needs of the specific region.
The FAO team, led by Mr Peter Kenmore, FAO Representative in India, was in Hyderabad on an invitation from the State Agriculture Minister, Mr Kanna Lakshminarayana.
The Minister wanted the Agriculture Department to identify areas where FAO intervention was necessary to make agriculture more remunerative for farmers. The crops that will find focus under this programme include oilseeds and pulses. The programme on pulses is expected to benefit from FAO expertise in areas such as modern technologies, expansion of genetic base, varietal diversity of the pulse crops such as red gram, green gram and black gram.
FAO is also willing to assist in capacity building for staff in the State Agriculture Department, as well trained personnel can be motivated to take up the challenges of enhancing farm productivity. The major thrust areas of capacity building for staff will be efficient water use technologies and effect of climate change on agriculture.
“In a scenario where technology is advancing at great speed, officers require constant upgradation of their knowledge on topics such as pesticide management, farmers field school approach, bio-diversity, drought mitigation strategies, minimising post harvest losses and precision agriculture,” a concept paper on areas of intervention by FAO said.