BHUBANESWAR: Department of Agriculture and Farmer’s Empowerment has signed an MoU with Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) to provide technical training on assessing land capability and crop water budgeting in all districts. The MoU was signed in the presence of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.Speaking on the occasion Naveen stressed on the need for restoring common land and water bodies through promotion of ecologically sound agricultural practices and water management.
The FES has developed a GIS-based tool CLART to assist village-level functionaries to appropriately identify, plan and design structures based on recharge potentiality, land use and slope. The CLART aims at addressing the current scenario in the absence of any technical expertise.Crop Water Budgeting is another tool developed by FES to assist communities for proper management of water resources. It is a farmer centric tool that assists the support system needed for village communities to balance demand with supplies, so that water consumption does not exceed the limits of recharge through rainfall, stream flows and surface water storage.
Executive Director of FES Jagdeesh Rao said FES will act as a facilitator for promoting ecologically sound agriculture practices by providing CLART software training to Village Agriculture Workers (VAW) and farmers for using the tool.Among others, Revenue and Disaster Management Minister Maheswar Mohanty, Agriculture Minister Pradeep Maharathy, Chief Secretary Aditya Padhi and Agriculture and Farmers’ Empowerment Secretary Saurabh Garg were present.