Jammu and Kashmir Agriculture minister Ghulam Hassan Mir has asked farmers of the state to opt for technology-driven farm practices for ensuring a better yield from their fields. Mir,who was addressing a function here yesterday,noted that a good yield was key to the financial betterment of farmers and urged them to switch to modern technologies for increasing the production. "It is a great challenge for the government to decrease production cost of agricultural crops. The agriculture department and its allied sectors are working round the clock to motivate farmers to introduce latest technology in their fields for quality production and better yields," Mir said. He said high productivity by using modern methods and effective marketing of products was the only way out to attract people,especially youth towards agriculture by ensuring them that it was a "profiting activity". "The people of our state show least concern towards the agriculture. This trend has forced our scientists to think for introduction of latest technology and use of quality hybrid seeds for increasing agriculture production," he said. Highlighting the awareness initiatives taken by the government,Mir said the agriculture department organises kisan and machine melas at block level to tell farmers the objectives and benefits of using new technologies. Mir said in most of the developed nations,agriculture continued to be the priority sector despite these countries making advances in other sectors as well. Terming the farmers as the basic pillar of state's economy,Mir asked the agriculture department as well as researchers to work in tandem and take research to the field. He also stressed for the need of crop diversification,saying that it was necessary for achieving self sufficiency in food production.
