Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on the 33rd foundation day of UP Council of Agricultural Research, stressed the need to adopt organic and natural farming practices to benefit the farmers and develop the state as ‘Jaivik Pradesh(Organic State)’.
While addressing the occasion on Tuesday, Yogi Adityanath said, “In the last 5 years, the agriculture department has played a key role in promoting agriculture with technology and also diversification with its programmes. The biggest challenge before is to ensure chemical-free farming at a lower cost. For this, organic farming should be widely promoted and adopted.”
The Chief Minister also congratulated all the scientists, office bearers associated with UP Council of Agricultural Research (UPCAR) on the occasion of its 33rd foundation day.
Stressing on the importance of organic, natural farming practices, Yogi exhorted the need to create awareness regarding them being a means of low cost, good production and toxin free farming. “For its encouragement, I call upon all agricultural scientists, to promote it, which will not only help in increasing the income of the farmers manifold, but will also provide a medium to get rid of all kinds of diseases,” he said.
Yogi said that the state government is setting up testing labs at all the divisional headquarters, where the process of certification of seeds and production is being done.
Expressing gratitude to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the CM lauded the provision of ‘Cow Based Natural Farming’ in the Union Budget. Both the central and the state governments are working to promote natural farming on the banks of river Ganga. While the state government is encouraging natural and organic farming in the entire region of Bundelkhand, he added.
Stating that Uttar Pradesh is the most populous state in the country, Yogi said that over 17 percent of the total population of the country resides in UP, however, only 12 percent of the agricultural land is in Uttar Pradesh. Despite this, Uttar Pradesh supplies 20 percent of the country’s food grains. This testifies the availability of fertile land and abundant water resources here.
Emphasising that Uttar Pradesh has enough potential, the CM stated the need to tap the state’s potential with various innovations. “In view of the interest of the farmers, our government ensured crop loan waiver in the year 2017. Record production and direct purchase from farmers is available in the state today. By completing the irrigation projects pending for decades (Ban sagar, Saryu Canal, Arjun Sahayak etc) in a time bound manner, we brought about massive change in the lives of crop growers,” he added.
Mentioning the government’s efforts to revive the sugar industry in Uttar Pradesh in the last five years, Yogi said that the closed sugar mills were restarted and even during the Covid-19 crisis, 120 sugar mills continued to function.
