Need to Rehabilitate the Water Logged Areas- Radha Mohan Singh

Union Minister of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare, Shri Radha Mohan Singh addressed the Steering Committee meeting of Second Green Revolution (SGR) at ICAR Research Complex for Eastern Region, Patna. Shri Singh said that there is need to rehabilitate the water logged areas in the region which accounts for 41 lakh hectare through integrated farming system approach. The Minister said that the responsibility for reviewing and implementation of agricultural activities for bring second green revolution in the Eastern region has been assigned to ICAR Research Complex for Eastern Region, Patna. The coordination and convergence between different agricultural activities, being implemented in different Eastern states by Govt. of India, will expedite the overall agricultural development in the region.

Union Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare Minister asked the distinguished members to take action to speed up the agriculture development programme in the region so that the dream of Hon’ble Prime Minister “Minimum Government, Maximum Governance” could be achieved. The Eastern states are contributing 50, 45 and 38% towards the production of rice, vegetables and fish, respectively at the national level. Moreover, the Eastern region has the potential to achieve significant production of milk, meat, pulses and oilseeds through overall development of the agriculture.

Shri Singh also urged the Scientists to mitigate the bad effect of climate change because in near future the change of climate will adversely affect the agricultural production as a whole. In this situation, there is need to develop and popularize climate smart technologies like short duration crops, application of conservation agriculture (zero tillage wheat, rice, direct seeded rice, protective cultivation under polyhouse, laser levelling, vermi and bio-compost, water management).

 For bringing Second Green Revolution in the region, Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare department of Govt. of India has constituted three levels of committees starting from State Coordination Committee(s), Technical Coordination Committee and Steering Committee to discuss the policy, investment, convergence and related issues for successful implementation of Second Green Revolution programme of Govt. of India.

Senior level officers of Eastern states, DDG (Crop Science), ICAR, Dr. J.S. Sandhu; Directors of various ICAR Institutes, VCs of State Agricultural Universities have participated in this meeting.