Agriculture Dept Meeting Chandor
Mrs. Janice Alphonso, Agriculture Officer attached to Zonal Agriculture Office, Margao of Agriculture Department, Government of Goa, conducted a meeting of farmers in the Chandor-Cavorim Panchayat hall on 29th June 2012.
In a talk that lasted for over 60 minutes, she went through all the schemes available with the department in detail. Mrs. Alphonso very lucidly explained the various schemes to promote paddy cultivation ranging from preparing the field, sowing the seed, maintaining the crop with applications of manure, micro nutrients and pesticides and harvesting.
She also listed out the various schemes available for horticulture plantations of mango, banana, coconut, areca nut, chickoos and other plants. Besides, she also went through the schemes available for crop protection through different types of fencing and also to control pests. It was indeed a very informative talk and the around 85 farmers gathered for the meeting benefitted a lot.
Many of those present including Sachin Fernandes from Villa Formosa and Agnelo Fernandes from Culsabhat sought explanations and advice for problems faced by them in their endeavours.
Ganv Bhavancho Ekvott General Secretary Julio D’Silva raised up issues pertaining to the village. He pointed out that the scheme to desilt water bodies like ponds is not sanctioned for Chandor-Cavorim village on grounds that it comes under the Command Area Development Authority on account of the Paroda canal. Mrs. Alphonso conceded that she was not aware of this situation and promised to check out on it and get back to the farmers.
She also promised all help to the farmers to cultivate the fields at Biczona for the next season after Julio pointed out that the jaya and jyoti promoted by the department do not grow in the area due to water logging and suggested that the department provide traditional variety like Kendal that was grown earlier.
She also conceded that the subsidy amount is received by the farmers after nearly a year due to various reasons and asked the farmers to bear up with this situation adding that the amount will ultimately reach the farmers albeit late.
Julio also sought advice on dealing with the problems faced by the villagers from pests like monkeys that are destroying horticultural crops and peacocks that are damaging paddy crop. Mrs. Alphonso recommended going in for electric fencing to deal with this problem.
She also revealed that the department could conduct training programme for farmers on a particular topic in the village itself besides offering training at their centres at Margao or Ella Farm. Special training sessions are also conducted outside the State for interested farmers, she said.