Go Your Own Road

Go Your Own Road has a great concept. It advises you to follow your heart...Pls don't get it wrong...It's just the theme...laying road over maize field....I hate jungles of concretes being made on natural landscape....

By: Mr Hadi Laghari

Mechanization key to food sufficiency

By Dexter A. See

An agriculture expert called on authorities to step up mechanization to achieve food sufficiency and help uplift lives in the countryside.

Rex Bingabing, director of the Philippine Center for Postharvest Development and Mechanization, said the upgrade is also meant to tap markets abroad.

“Compared to neighboring countries, the Philippines is low in agricultural mechanization resulting in low productivity, poor product quality and high postharvest losses,” he told Manila Standard.

In terms of horsepower per hectare, Bingabing said the country’s level of mechanization was 0.52 hp/ha compared to Japan’s 7 hp/ha, China’s 4.1 hp/ha, Vietnam’s 1.56 hp/ha and Thailand’s .7hp/ha.

To feed the growing population that is expected to hit the 100 million mark in 2016, yield must be maximized and loss minimized, he said.

PhilMech, an attached bureau of the Department of Agriculture, aims to provide equipment on an 85/15 percent counterparting scheme between government and irrigators associations along with cooperatives and other farmers’ groups.

“We need to change some of our agricultural practices and technologies to achieve self-sufficiency,” Bingabing said.

Original Article Here

Give priority to mechanisation of agriculture, farmers told

Two-day Krishi Utsav begins in Katapady

S.A. Prabhakar Sharma, Chief Executive Officer of the zilla panchayat, said on Saturday that farmers should give importance to mechanisation of agriculture.

He was speaking at the inaugural function of the two-day Krishi Utsav organised by the zilla panchayat, Department of Agriculture, Sri Kshetra Dharmasthala Rural Development Project, and the Dakshina Kannada Milk Producers' Federation here. Mr. Sharma said the government had introduced a single window clearance system to provide technological inputs and agricultural information to farmers. It encouraged interaction between farmers and scientists to increase agricultural productivity.

Karnataka was among the most agrarian States in the country. Changes were taking place in agriculture after the advent of globalisation and liberalisation in the 1990s. It was essential for farmers to keep pace with these changes, he said.

Though paddy was the chief crop of the district, its cultivation suffered because of shortage of labour, high cost of production, and decline in prices. To help farmers, the government had announced support price for paddy. In 2011-12, the government purchased 12,500 quintals of paddy in Udupi district, Mr. Sharma said.

Original Article Here