The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Kurnool News : Minister for frugality at farm meets

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Kurnool

Minister for frugality at farm meets

Staff Reporter

Reviews arrangements for district-level conventions to be held from May 20

The Agriculture Minister, N. Raghuveera Reddy, holding a video-conference in Kurnool on Tuesday.

KURNOOL: The Agriculture Minister, N. Raghuveera Reddy, called upon the District Collectors and the Joint Directors of Agriculture (JDAs) to avoid extravagance at the district-level farmers' conventions beginning May 20. The conventions are aimed at filling the technology gap and enable elevation of farming to a remunerative avocation.

Mr. Raghuveera Reddy reviewed with the Collectors and JDAs in a video-conference from here on Tuesday to ascertain that everything was in place for conduct of the meetings. The Chief Minister, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, will visit all districts to formally inaugurate the conventions. Dr. Reddy is likely to cover three districts in a day and spend an hour at each.

The Agriculture Minister told the officers to make the meetings more purposeful by selecting the right participants and keeping the venue away from urban areas to avoid unwanted crowd. In districts like Adilabad and Prakasam, the meetings were allowed in the district headquarters for security reasons.

Annual meets

He said the conventions were not planned with any political motive and would be made an annual affair hereafter. Separate meetings would be held to reorient farmers for Rabi crops. Around 8,000 farmers would attend the two-day conference, at the rate of 4,000 each day. An amount of Rs. 12 lakhs was sanctioned for each district to conduct the conventions.

Besides the support from the Agriculture Department, other allied departments like Fisheries, Animal Husbandry, Sericulture and Marketing were allowed to chip in. The farmers would be provided free transport and food. Interactive sessions with scientists and exhibitions would be organised to expose farmers to the latest technical developments in the field. The convention would be like trainers' training programme.

During the interaction with the Minister, the JDAs said that engaging private buses were cheaper compared to buses from the APSRTC. Buses belonging to educational institutions lie in garages during summer vacation and they could be used for transporting farmers to the meetings by paying nominal amounts for fuels, the JDAs suggested.

The Agriculture Commissioner, Poonam Malakondaiah, said the two-day convention should produce a strategy paper for each district.

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