By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 12 Oct: There is an urgent need to accelerate agricultural growth with forestry to address issues of food security, nutrition adequacy, rural income generation, employment, environment and poverty. Due to the wood and food demand of the country, there is a need to encourage and evolve suitable agroforestry practices on farmland. Tree farming is ecologically as well as economically more viable than traditional agricultural practices. To minimise these demands, agroforestry is a dire need of today and the economy of farmers may be improved and ecological balance in nature may also be established. Before application of effective practices on agroforestry on farmland, there is a requirement of awareness and technical knowhow.
Keeping this in view, the Forest Research Institute (FRI) organised a 2-day online training on 11-12 October on “Development of Agroforestry Practices for Livelihood Generation” for Farmers, NGOs, SHG personnel and other stakeholders from Punjab, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, and Chandigarh under the sponsorship of Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change. As many as 34 participants from these categories participated in the training.
Richa Misra, Head, Extension Division, delivered the welcome address. She said that the participants would not only learn or improve their skills with subject experts but they would gain new experience in the field of agroforestry and new technologies.
AS Rawat, Director General, ICFRE, and Director, Forest Research Institute (FRI), inaugurated the online training on 11 October. He emphasised that there is a lot of scope for agroforestry. If agroforestry is promoted in the states as per their specific needs, there would be a lot of opportunities for livelihood and income generation, and farmers would get proper price of their agroforestry produce with damaging the climatic environment. He said that the agroforestry species and their practices developed by FRI, Dehradun could be transferred to stakeholders through Lab to Land processes. Queries could be addressed at any time through the Vaniki Helpline number.
The programme was anchored by Dr Charan Singh, Scientist-E, Extension Division. The vote of thanks was proposed by Rambir Singh, Scientist-E. Dr Devendra Kumar, Scientist-E, Ajay Gulati, ACTO, Anil Kumar, Technician, and others of Extension Division were also present.
