The Agricultural GDP in the Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir is all set to increase from Rs 37,559 crores to Rs 65,701 crores by the next five years through 29 interventions, the Apex Committee constituted by the J&K Government has estimated. These 29 interventions are set to create around 19,000 new enterprises in the agriculture sector besides an additional 2.8 lakh jobs, the government says.
The Agriculture Production department in the second leg of the mammoth task of human resource development of officers of the agriculture and allied departments across the Union Territory concluded its divisional-level training programme under the newly-launched Holistic Agriculture Development Programme (HADP).
The HADP aims to be a turning point in the agri-economy of the UT whereby Rs 5013 crore shall be infused over next the 5 years through 29 interventions/projects, which were proposed by the Apex Committee constituted by the J&K Government headed by Mangla Rai, former DG-ICAR.
For the grounding of these 29 interventions, an equally matching Holistic Human Resource Development Programme was conceptualised. The Agriculture Production Department devised a two-pronged strategy whereby firstly all the gazetted and non-gazetted employees from Agriculture, Horticulture, Animal Husbandry, Sheep Husbandry, Fisheries, Sericulture departments besides SKUAST-J/K, JKHPM, JKHPMC and JK Agro Industries will be trained in three phases – UT level, divisional level and district level. Secondly, a massive farmers’ orientation programme shall be launched from April 24 onwards whereby all farmers of the UT shall be apprised of the 29 interventions by the employees of the departments which by then would have been trained.
This capacity-building programme, which is the first of its kind in the Union territory, was inaugurated by Lieutenant Governor, Manoj Sinha, with the UT-level training in the month of January from the 6th onwards for three consecutive days in the first phase. Under this, around 600 officers from Agriculture, Horticulture, Animal Husbandry, Sheep Husbandry, Fisheries, Sericulture departments besides SKUAST-J/K, JKHPM, JKHPMC and JK Agro Industries participated.
In the second phase that started on 11th January 2023, the training programmes were organised in both the divisions at four locations namely SKUAST-Jammu, SKUAST-Kashmir, Department of Agriculture, Jammu and Department of Agriculture, Kashmir. A total of 171 resource persons drawn from SKUAST-Jammu, SKUAST-Kashmir and Developmental departments undertook the mission of imparting training to officers from line departments. The training programmes were held in 58 sessions over 17 days starting from 11th January till February 3. A total of 5273 participants from developmental departments under APD undertook the training under various sessions.
In the third phase of the training programme, the district-level training shall be organised from February 6 to April 10 in all the twenty districts of the UT. A total of 580 training sessions shall be held in which training shall be imparted to all the gazetted and non-gazetted employees of line departments in the districts.