ITANAGAR, 15 Jul: Union Earth Sciences Minister Kiren Rijiju on Friday announced that instruments for extensive weather reading and three large Doppler radar stations will be installed in Arunachal Pradesh soon.
Chairing a farmers’ awareness programme here, the union minister said that the installation of the instruments would result in accurate weather forecasts in the state, which would directly benefit the farmers to plan their agricultural activities for maximising productivity and minimising losses.
He urged the farmers to increase agricultural productivity by using scientific applications.
The minister, who represents the state’s western parliamentary constituency, informed that, since climate is an important factor in everyone’s lives and the fast-changing climate due to global warming is going to have an impact, all need to change lifestyles and respond to it scientifically.
He appealed to the farmers to take full advantage of the programme.
“It is because of the initiatives of the NDA government through various schemes and programmes that the country and the state have seen improvement in road connectivity, electricity in every village, direct beneficiary transfer system, midday meal scheme and many others,” he said.
The programme, themed ‘Self-reliant farmers: Empowering farmers through agro meteorological advisory services in changing climate’, was jointly organised by the union earth sciences ministry, the India Meteorological Department, the Association of Agrometeorologists, the state’s agricultural department, and the Centre for Earth Sciences & Himalayan Studies, here.
Earlier in the programme, Agriculture Minister Tage Taki said that the reason for less productivity in the state can be attributed to no tools for assessment of climatic variation.
“Lack of weather-related data like rain density and wind velocity results in the failure of designing effective and efficient agricultural structure,” Taki said, and requested the team from the union earth sciences ministry to “consider the agro-climatic zones, climatic variations and the shortcomings in accurate weather forecast in the state,” and train the farmers accordingly, so that they gain maximum benefit from the training. (PTI)
