Farmers told to adopt new cropping methods in tune with climate change

 Wanaparthy: Taking part in an awareness programme for the farmers over the cropping patters and innovative farming methods, District Collector Swetha Mahanty advised the farmers to adopt different cropping patterns and progressive farming methods to ensure that they get good returns and mitigate losses due to natural calamities. 

Particularly, the District Collector stressed that the farmers must adopt new cropping methods based on the climate changes. “Climate change is the major issue that is impacting and affecting the entire farming community in the district. Therefore, the farmers must choose the crops based on the climate so that they can mitigate losses in case the climate turns harsh,” said Swetha Mahanty. 

She said that by adopting cropping patterns based on the type of climate in which the farmer is, they can reap good returns and at the same time they will incur minimum losses in any harsh climate changes.
 
In fact, the programme of adoption of cropping pattern based on climatic conditions was launched by the Central government in the year 2016 and it is being propagated through leading agriculture scientists from EPTRI, ICRISAT and Agriculture University. However, the awareness about this new initiative has not gone deep into the villages. In view of this, the District Collector has taken up the initiative of promoting the climate-based farming and has decided to select the villages of Agaram, Antayapally, Allamaipally, Venkatampally, Parvatapur villages under Ghanapur mandal of Wanaparthy district and planning to implement the programme. 

“We have selected a few villages and divided them into two groups of shortage of water and surplus water villages and accordingly will identify about 720 small scale farmers from these villages and suggest them to adopt the climate change crops like plantation crops, horticulture crops, form pond construction, cattle rearing, poultry industry, sheep rearing etc. For which, the government will provide 50 per cent subsidy, where in if the farmer bears Rs 57,500, in turn the government would give another Rs 57,500 as subsidy and will sanction subsidy units worth Rs. 1.15 lakh to the eligible farmers,” informed the Collector.