State Agri Marketing Board begins virtual training of its personnel
Kolkata: West Bengal State Agricultural Marketing Board (WBSAMB) has decided to commence the training of its own personnel in different parts of the state through virtual mode. The training programme of the Board has come to a halt since March after the lockdown in the state began to prevent the spread of COVID-19 virus.
State Agricultural Marketing minister chaired the board meeting of WBSAMB on Wednesday and asked the concerned officials to work out a mechanism for virtual training of its officers. The minister also instructed the Board officials to work out means of starting training programme for the farmers in small groups maintaining physical distancing and sanitising guidelines as per COVID health protocol.
The training programme that is offered by the Board at Netaji Subhash Agricultural Marketing Training Institute (NSTIAM) at Baidyabati, Hooghly is to motivate the next generation farmers towards market-driven production mechanism to increase the unit share of the produces in the consumers price. The training involves imparting knowledge on scientific preservation, post harvest management and value addition through practical orientation. The personnel of the Board are also trained so that they are equipped to train the farmers.
"The physical presence of the farmers is very much essential during our training programme. They need to come stay at a particular location near our institute and join the residential progamme. This year the group that was enlisted for training mainly hail from North Bengal districts. But the Corona pandemic situation has compelled us to postpone the training," said a senior official of WBSAMB.
During the fiscal 2019-20, 2341 trainees were trained in 103 batches. 15 different types of training was conducted with introduction of four new types of training. It has been the highest in any financial year in the history of NSTIAM. During the period from April'19 to Mar'20, for the 12 batches of Young Members of Farm Families, trained during 2018-19, the average income per group is Rs. 95,575/- and average income per member per month is Rs 8,689/- during the same period.
Till date NSTIAM has covered 140 blocks from 22 districts, which is 41.1 percent of the total blocks of the state. The training programme commenced from 2010-11 fiscal and proliferated from the 2014-15 financial year. The training is offered to various levels of personnel involved in agricultural marketing activities such as representatives of WBSAMB, progressive farmers, young representatives of farm families, Farmer Produces Organizations, Farmer Produces Companies, SHG, traders, entrepreneurs etc to help them develop bankable projects for sustainable livelihood.
"We deem our programme as successful with the transformation of a farmer to an entrepreneur," a senior official said.
