Jammu and Kashmir government has recorded enthusiastic registration of farmers across all districts of the UT under ‘Daksh Kisan’, a first-of-its-kind hybrid skilling programme designed exclusively for the farming community, said an official statement.

“Over 12000 farmers have registered themselves in the Daksh Kisan Portal till now and around 3000 farmers have been enrolled in skilling course of their choice. Besides, a substantial number of farmers have already progressed to an advanced level of completion of the online skilling course”, an official spokesperson informed while giving details about ongoing Kisan Sampark Abhiyan.

“Daksh Kisan- is a Learning Management System (LMS) for the skill development of farmers. A first of its kind in the country, DAKSH KISAN, has been developed by the Agriculture Production Department, where 121 skilling courses per the agro-climatic zones of J-K are free to the farmers. A simple scan of the QR code at the back of the pamphlet is being provided to farmers during

Kisan Sampark Abhiyan which takes them to Daksh Kisan Portal where he can register for free and undertake any skilling course of his/her liking”, he added.

Attributing the credit of this rare accomplishment to the ambitious ‘Kisan Sampark Abhiyan’, the official said that the initiative launched on April 24, 2023, has completed five rounds till this week with coverage of about 1367 panchayats. Nearly,1.5 lakh farmers across all districts of J-K have attended the orientation programme during these five rounds of orientation programmes.

This massive farmer’s orientation exercise is being undertaken by the Agriculture Production department in J-K whereby ambitious targets of reaching out to farmers in each and every Panchayat have been envisaged under the Kisan Sampark Abhiyan in the next 4 months. The farmers outreach exercise has been planned under the recently launched Holistic Agriculture Development Programme (HADP).

The orientation programme is being organised simultaneously across all the districts of the UT. The programme has been designed to be conducted on the first three days of every week. The Government has issued an exhaustive district-specific calendar.

Under LMS, video lectures and textual material are available in Kashmiri, Urdu, Dogri and Hindi. Besides, specialised modules on business development and financial management have also been included to ensure that the farmers are not merely trained but become skilful entrepreneurs. After completion of online courses, the farmers shall be sent for 5-7 days to Krishi Vigyan Kendras in their respective districts for practical hands-on training in their chosen skilling course. On successful completion of the skilling course, the farmers shall be provided certificates by SKUAST J/K, read the official statement.

Additionally, a question-answer session after each screening session of videos is being held to clear the doubts of farmers. The farmers are also being provided with pamphlets of all the schemes in the three languages (Hindi, Urdu and English) in the shape of a booklet, which also contains the information about the contact details of all the departments under the agriculture production department of the UT, mentions the official statement.

The farmers are also being educated about the mode of an application under these schemes using the KISAN SATHI- the IT Dashboard of the schemes developed by APD.

A baseline survey and skill gap study of farmers is also being carried out simultaneously during the Kisan Sampark Abhiyan. The data of around 1.4 lakh farmers have been captured to date using

IT tools for having a holistic assessment of the state of Agriculture and farmers in the UT.

Source ANI