Glimpse of brainstorming on Doubling Farmer’s income by ICAR-IARI, NIF & Vibha Vani

The brainstorming session on ‘Innovations and Entrepreneurship for Rural Prosperity: Doubling Farmers’ Incomes by 2022’  jointly organized by ICAR- Indian Agricultural Research Institute in collaboration with National Innovation Foundation-India & Vibha Vani in New Delhi on 2^nd November has proved to be a grand success with lots of debates and discussions from dignitaries from different departments of agriculture.  

The venue of the programme was Prof M.S. Swaminathan Library Hall, New Delhi. The session began with the ICAR song followed by welcome address and relevance of Farmers led-innovations to enhance income and quality of life by Dr. J.P Sharma, JDR, ICAR-IARI. Details about the workshop were provided by Dr. R.N Padaria, Professor (Ag. Extension). Remarks by the guest of honour were given by Dr. Ashok Dalwai, CEO, NRAA and Sh. A Jayakumar, Advisor, Vibha Vani. Presidential address was given by Dr. A.k.Singh, DDG (AE) & Director, ICAR-IARI. And the guest of honour was Ramesh Chand, Member, NITI Aayog and Finance Commission.  

The programme was followed by talks on different speakers from ASRB & ICAR on livestock, crop, Horticulture, PHT and NRM. The scope for panel discussion was provided to the participants also. 

The discussion on Grassroots Innovations, Farmer-led Innovations and Institutional and policy Innovations were an important part of the session, which will lead someway to the betterment of youth in agriculture. The ease would be implemented in big way. 

Doubling farmers’ income by the year 2022 is not only a challenge to the policy makers and development workers but also for the agricultural scientists. Millions of farmers are silently addressing livelihood constraints and exploring new opportunities by experimenting with unique combinations of indigenous knowledge and new ideas from a variety of sources for supporting food security of the country. The following broad theme areas;  Crop, Horticulture, Bee Keeping innovations,  NRM, Machinery innovations,  Post-harvest processing and marketing innovations Animal & Fisheries based Innovations were the part of the session which can be implemented in terms of new innovations and entrepreneurships for the betterment of farming community. 

The National Innovation Foundation (NIF), Vice chairperson Mr. N.P. Rajive told Krishi Jagran that it is India's national initiative to strengthen the grassroots technological innovations and outstanding traditional knowledge. Its mission is to help India become a creative and knowledge-based society by expanding policy and institutional space for grassroots technological innovators.NIF has also set up an augmented Fabrication Laboratory (Fab Lab) with the help of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Boston, for product development and strengthening in-house research.NIF has also filed applications for 41 plant varieties developed by farmers at the Protection of Plant Varieties & Farmers' Rights Authority.  It has also succeeded in commercializing products across countries in six continents, apart from being successful in materializing 98 cases of technology licensing, many with the support of Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network (GIAN). 

Another organizer Vibha Vani on its turn said that their vision is to improve the quality of life of an ordinary citizen by creating an Integrated Sustainable Community Development Model (ISCD) across the nation by executing SMART Projects.   Therefore, through this approach they would be able to implement their policies on grass root level for the upliftment of the country.