In an attempt to double the farmers’ earnings in Tripura where more than 42 per cent of the population directly depends on agriculture and allied activities and their contribution to the GSDP is 30 per cent, a livestock development programme was held at Bagma on Friday in which farmers from different parts of the State were present.
The village-level programme under the NEI Project was organised in association with Bagma Agri Producer Company Limited (BAPCL) in which Dr. Ashok Santra , Principal Scientist, Dr. Ajoy Mandal , Principal Scientist, Dr. M. Karunakaran , Principal Scientist, Dr. Saroj Rai, Scientist and Dr. Somnath Dutta, Chief Technical Officer of ICAR – NDRI – ERS, Kalyani attended. They visited different villages of Tripura in connection with NEH Project – NDRI component for the livestock development programme . Khokan Dey, DDM of NABARD for Gomati and South Tripura district also attended the programme.
Notably, the NDRI is helping to double farmers’ income depending on agri-allied activities.
Rajesh Bhowmik, Business Officer and Manna Banik, Business Officer from Virbac Animal Health (VAH) attended the programme and discussed the importance of egg production in the country India on the celebration of “World Egg Day”.
Dr. M.S Chauhan, Director, NDRI, Karnel, Dr. S.M Deb, Head ERS, Kalyani & Dr. T.K Dutta , In-charge, NEH Project extended their wholehearted supports to organize the programme.
As part of today’s programme , an interaction session was held between the dairy farmers and experts. Besides, a Veterinary Health Camp and distribution of different inputs to the farmers like Goats and chicks, animal feed, mineral mixture etc among farmers were also carried out.
The price of goat meat in Tripura is around Rs:1200 and the inflation rate in the case of goat meat was16.49 per cent in 2019-20 as compared to the preceding year of 2018-19. In view of the prevailing situation relating to goat meat, a total of fifty and more farmers received goats from NADR free of cost to increase the farmers’ economic condition.
A total of 120 farmers of the state also received poultry items in this programme.
The government of Tripura has also taken different steps to provide health coverage to all the livestock and poultry of any breed in view of the possibility of contagious and non-contagious diseases.
Sudip Majumder, Chairman of BAPCL has requested all the beneficiaries to do the agri-allied activities to increase their income.
(Representative pic taken from internet)