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“Farmers can play an important role in development of farm machinery as no one knows his requirement better than him,” Dr U.S Shivhare, Director of Central Institute of Post Harvest Engineering and Technology (CIPHET) made these remarks during the conclusion of five-day training on post harvest technology for value addition under the Farmer's Technology Transfer Fund (FTTF) programme of National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) here on Friday.
After distributing certificates to farmers, Dr Shivhare said that scientists had technical know-how for the development of machinery. “But farmers involvement could help in development of more competitive and cost effective farm machinery,” he said, adding that the CIPHET would help farmers in customized development of machines according to their requirements. Saying that the institute would like to maintain long lasting relation with the trained farmers, Dr Shivhare assured the farmers that they could contact them any time for technical assistance. “We would facilitate farmers by all possible means.”
Stressing the need for adoption of post harvest technologies, Head Transfer of Technology Division, Dr Deepak Raj Rai said that by establishing on-farm processing units of small scale farmers could multiply their income manifolds. Assistant General Manager of NABARD, Mr Nalin K Rai suggested the farmers to form group in villages and set up processing units. “This will bring down cost and would help in maximum utilization of farm machinery,” he said, adding that NABARD could also provide subsidy to some of the bankable projects. Technical Officer of CIPHET, Mr O.P Moondan took feedback from the farmers and proposed a vote of thanks. Jaspal Singh, a farmer from Ludhiana district, termed training programme quite useful. “We are thinking of forming a group to establish processing units based on CIPHET technology,” he added.
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