On 28th Feb 2023, Mr. Ramesh H. Rai- Chief District Agriculture Officer (CDAO), Mr. Sarat Kumar Parida- District Agriculture Officer (DAO) and Mr. S Chandrasekhar Rao- Deputy Director Agriculture (DDA) of District Puri (Odisha) visited the Farm Field School of village Bantaligaon of Block Gop of Puri District, Odisha, established under the intervention HRDP Puri implemented by Prayatn Sanstha with the support of HDFC Bank under its CSR initiative – ‘Parivartan’. The officers appreciated the FFS beneficiaries for their shift towards organic farming while incorporating advanced technology with traditional agricultural methods for better results.
The videography of all FFS activities has been done during the visit in order to make a documentary of the same to be telecasted in local TV channels. Video shooting included agricultural activities namely green house, vermi compost, amritjal sanjibani, horticulture plantation, paddy demo field and vegetable demo field, which focused on practicing organic farming in order to improve the soil health in long run. Mr Ramesh asserted that soil health would guarantee success for farmers who perform multi-cropping, relay cropping or other methods of cropping. He further ensured all support from the Government Agriculture Department to the farmers of FFS villages so that they can plan and organise their farming activities prudently, which in turn will increase net income of the farmers.
In addition, Deputy Director of Agriculture promised the provision of certain facilities from the agriculture department with immediate effect in the Bantaligaon FFS by 15th April 2023, which include-
1- Mini soil testing laboratory establishment in the FFS
2- Solar cold storage
3- Cow shed with two cow
4- Provision of mini power tiller
5- Mini poultry cum dockery farming
6- Pond renovation
Mr. Pravesh Maurya (Agriculture Expert, Prayatn) applauded the FFS farmers post visit as linkage of farmers with the agricultural department has improved through their visit to Bantaligaon farm field school and the farmers have started getting benefits from Agriculture Department. For example- recently they have received mini power tiller, vermi bed and sprinkler in subsidy. These benefits have influenced other farmers to start coming to the FFS for learning and applying the same method in their own agriculture field.
On account of this, Mr. Bidubhusan (farmer of Bantaligaon FFS) expressed his gratitude to Prayatn through his words- “We are very much fortunate for being a part of Bantaligaon FFS and we really appreciate Prayatn for the FFS initiative, which has availed us these benefits from Government which might not have been possible otherwise. We are also grateful to the Agriculture officers who visited our FFS field and provided handholding support to succeed in agriculture via availing of the schemes and services.”
