Zonal Review Workshop of Farmer FIRST Programme under Zone V

Proceedings of Zonal Review Workshop of Farmer FIRST Programme (FFP) conducted at ICAR-ATARI Kolkata One Zonal Review Workshop of Farmer FIRST Programme (FFP) was organized through hybrid mode by ICAR-Agricultural Technology Application Research Institute (ATARI), Kolkata for three ICAR Institutes i.e. ICAR-CIFA, Bhubaneswar, ICAR-IIWM, Bhubaneswar and ICAR-NRRI, Cuttack and one SAU i.e. OUAT, Bhubaneswar on 31.10.2023 in the conference hall under the Chairmanship of Dr. Pradip Dey, Director-cum- Chairman, Zonal Programme Management Committee (ZPMC), FFP, ATARI Kolkata. Dr. S.S Dana, Honorable Vice Chancellor, WBUAFS, Kolkata was the Chief Guest and Dr. P. J. Mishra, Dean, Extension Education, OUAT, Bhubaneswar was the Guest of Honour in the workshop. Dr. R. Roy Burman, ADG (AE) ICAR, New Delhi attended the meeting virtually. Dr. K. S. Das, Pr. Scientist-cum-Member-Secretary, ZPMC, ATARI Kolkata coordinated the workshop. A total of 39 persons including Pr. Scientists from ATARI Kolkata viz. Dr. P. P. Pal, Dr. A. Haldar and Dr. S K Mondal; PIs/Co-PIs/SRF of the FFP implementing institutes viz. Dr. S.K. Mishra, Pr. Scientist and Dr. B. S. Sathapthy, Sr. Scientist from IIWM; Dr. B. Mondal, Pr. Scientist from NRRI, Cuttack; Dr. B. S. Rath, Prof. and Head, Deptt. of Agronomy, Dr. M. R. Nath, Asstt. Professor, Deptt. of Horticulture and Mrs. A. Sahoo, SRF, FFP from OUAT and Dr. S. Sarkar, Sr. Scientist-cum Co-PI from CIFA and all project/administrative staff of ATARI Kolkata physically attended the meeting. Inaugural Session: The inaugural session started with the ICAR song. After formal welcome by Dr. K.S. Das, all participants introduced themselves. Dr. Das presented a brief overview of FFP programme by explaining its unique objectives, physical achievements of FFP including number of villages/ modules/ farm families covered, financial achievements including year- wise fund allocation and its utilization against each center, publications done etc. He urged to all PIs/Co-PIs to specify the details of interventions followed/ included under different modules while comparing the economic feasibility and also to verify the data sets before reporting. He also advised them to cover all six modules in the new adopted villages and suggested to assess the technological impact of various interventions after leaving the activities in the adopted villages. In his opening remarks, Dr. R. Roy Burman briefed about the objectives of the programme and suggested for more participation by farmers, scientists and balanced module approach saturate entire households of the village clusters. He suggested to rationalize the limited resources available with the FFP centres and carrying out 75% of their total activities in the new villages and 25% in the old villages indicating that there will be very little chance of enhancing of fund allotment during last two years of EFC. Dr. Roy Burman also emphasised on establishing seed hub, raising sustainability fund and partnership with district/state administration for content mobilisation, horizontal diffusion of technologies with collaboration with state/district administration, up-scaling and out-scaling of technologies demonstrated through FFP. In his inaugural address, Dr. S.S. Dana pointed out the importance of impact study of technology dissemination, sustainability after discontinuation of the project and avoiding duplication of the similar programme by various agencies. He stressed upon the evaluation of different technologies demonstrated through FFP and requested for convergence with state line departments for more dissemination of technologies.