A three-day Agriculture Summit and Exhibition, organised by the Southern India Chamber of Commerce and Industry, opened in the city on Friday with District Collector K. Rajamani calling upon farmers to focus on value addition of farm produce to get better returns.
Inaugurating the summit, Mr. Rajamani pointed out that farmers were facing varied challenges in keeping farming profitable. It was essential for them to adopt latest farming technologies and best practices. It was also vital that they turn entrepreneurs by going in for value addition so that their produce can fetch higher returns, he said.
“Only recently, a few farmers have started adding value to banana, a crop widely grown in the district. This has to be scaled up in a big way”, he said and called upon farmers to effectively leverage government programmes such as collective farming and the supply chain management schemes to their advantage.
K. Ramasamy, Vice-Chancellor, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, underlined the need for removing hurdles impeding the growth of agriculture sector. He regretted that villages do not offer opportunities for growth leading to migration of youth to cities. While persons who defraud banks of crores of rupees are able to flee the country, farmers defaulting on crop loans are humiliated by banks who publish their photos to shame them. Despite challenges on several fronts, farmers are still managing to produce adequate quantity of foodgrains to meet the requirement of the country, he pointed out.
He called upon the National Research Centre for Banana (NRCB) in Tiruchi to take up research on indigenous banana varieties and supply tissue culture banana succours of the same to farmers.
He cautioned students against joining courses in private agricultural colleges which do not have approval or affiliation. Only students studying in approved government and government-aided institutions would be eligible for higher studies and government jobs, he said.
S. Uma, Director, NRCB, observed that the research centre has developed various technologies in banana cultivation and urged farmers to approach scientists of the centre for solutions to specific issues and problems. The NRCB stall at the expo features as many as 75 varieties of banana, she said.
R. Ganapathi, Senior vice president, SICCI, said technology had maximum application in agriculture sector. In future, emerging fields such as artificial intelligence and predictive analysis would have a big role to play in agriculture, he said.
The exhibition will be open till Sunday at the Uzhavar Sandhai grounds in the city.