Farmers’ training in India is provided at the local level through Krishi Vigyan Kendras and some vocational agriculture schools. There are only 694 Krishi Vigyan Kendra in India which are not sufficient to provide village-to-village training to the farmers. Moreover, there is an inadequacy in terms of frequency of training imparted by the Kendra.
Village to village farmers’ training is essential to increase their income as well as sustainability of agriculture practices. Training provides an opportunity to the farmers to become aware of agricultural technologies and the shift in agricultural development.
This is how village to village training of farmers can happen with the help of primary school teachers:
Proactive primary school teachers (one teacher from each village) shall be identified and given training by Krishi Vigyan Kendras. The training program will cover topics like government schemes and programs for farmers, modern agricultural technologies, allied vocations like dairy processing, bee keeping, poultry farming and vermicompost making, biotechnology, organic farming and soil enrichment, crop selection, crop rotation, cover crops, inter-cropping and poly-culture, irrigation, rain water harvesting, natural pest predators, bio-intensive integrated pest management, natural resource preserving, recycling and utilizing wastes and food storing and processing.
The trained teachers will conduct training sessions/workshops for the farmers of their respective villages on the first/last Sunday of every month. They will train the farmers and impart knowledge of new agricultural techniques and various govt. schemes. Teachers will also be encouraged to conduct motivational workshops in the suicide-prone regions of India.
Teachers are held in high regards in villages. This will ensure the participation of majority of farmers in the training sessions. They should be given a respectable monthly honorarium by the government. Annual training sessions should be arranged by Krishi Vigyan Kendras for capacity development of teachers to update their knowledge on modern agricultural technologies.
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