Dir Agri visits Apiarists at Ajas in Bandipora

Srinagar, June 24: The Director Agriculture Kashmir, Chowdhury Mohammad Iqbal Saturday visited Apiarists at Ajas Bandipora and held an interactive session with concerned bee keepers.
He took stock of various related activities and received feed back regarding various interventions by the department.
Addressing, Director Agriculture highlighted the importance of small scale agriculture cottage industries like Bee Keeping/ Apiculture and mushroom cultivation for small and marginal farmers.
He asked the farmers to go for diversification in agriculture activities. He said that diversification contributes to the economic security of the farming community against changes in Climate and Soil resources.
Director Agriculture said Multi-crore projects have been approved by the government under Holistic Agriculture Development Programme (HADP) for the promotion of apiculture in the UT of J&K. He said the promotion of apiculture And mushroom are among the 29 projects recently approved after being recommended by the UT level apex Committee for HADP.
Chowdhury Iqbal assured the concerned farmers of every possible technical support from the department. He asked the concerned officers to put in all the efforts for the successful implementation of different programme aimed to promote the agriculture activities like apiculture And mushroom among the small and marginal farmers of the region.
He also marked the importance of raising the awareness among the farmers regarding the Apiculture/ Mushroom Centric Schemes & programmes so that more and more educated youth could be attracted towards these enterprises.
Director Agriculture assured bee keepers of different facilitates including marketing facilities so that they could fetch maximum returns for their produce. He said that their genuine issues would be addressed on priority basis.