Participation in National Horticulture Fair of IIHR, Bengaluru on 8th February 2021
On 8th February, Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Hirehalli organised Online event of Inauguration of National Horticulture Fair being conducted at ICAR-IIHR,Bengaluru. For this event, farmers and farmer members of FPO based at Hebburu were participated and learned about the Horticulture technologies being disseminated through Our Host Institute IIHR, Bengaluru. This fair is being conducted for 5 days to show case the Advanced technologies in Horticulture Science as well as integrated farming system(IFS).
While welcoming the guests and all those joined the event, Dr. M.R. Dinesh, Director, ICAR-IIHR, informed that this year’s theme ‘Horticulture: For start-up and stand-up India’ is very aptly chosen for boosting the horticulture as an enterprise and to promote the ‘Atmanirbhar Krishi’ through entrepreneurship development. He also mentioned that >300 licenses have been issued and how entrepreneurship is growing in horticulture as there are avenues for it from seed production to value added products. Dr. Raghavendra Bhatta, Director, ICAR-NAINP, Bengaluru and Dr. V. Venkatasubramanian, Director, ICAR-ATARI, Bengaluru, were also present during the inaugural function.
Dr. T. Mohapatra congratulated the institute for organising this kind of event, year after year for the benefit of the horticulture farmers and urged to make the “Krishi Labhdayak and Nature Friendly”. He emphasised to create awareness for nutrition security among the consumers for increasing the use of fruits and vegetables.
Sri Sri Ravishankar Ji in his speech stressed that everyone has to go back to the natural farming, which is the not only environmentally safe but also provides nutritional security and health benefits. He expressed his desire that a greater number of farmers should get connected with such type of fairs and urged that that all the horticulture based ICAR institutes and department agencies should join together to make the country nutritionally secured.
An interactive session with the ICAR- ATARI of Karnataka, Kerala and Lakshadweep and associated KVKs to address the farmers’ problems of these zone was also organised during the first day. Several ICAR-IIHR technologies were displayed to the farmers of these zones through live streaming and videos during this session.
Many stakeholders, farmers and students showed their interest by participating in large number in the NHF. The event was cross-posted live through the ICAR social media page enabling everyone to participate virtually due to the prevailing pandemic situation. The organising secretary Dr. M.V. Dhanajaya, Organizing Secretary, NHF profusely thanked everyone for their support for this five-day fair and urged all the farmers and the stakeholders to join the event and be benefited.
In this program, totally 45 farmers (34 Male and 11 Female) are participated at Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Hirehalli and farmers were also shown the activities of the KVK, Hirehalli like seed production activities and other IIHR Technologies to get the higher income. This Programme at KVK, Hirehalli was coordinated by Dr.Somashekhar, SMS(Plant Breeding) and Mr.Prashanth J M. SMS(Horticulture), finally the programme of virtual event concluded with Vote of thanks by Mr.Chandrashekhar, CEO of PFO.
