Dr. Anil Kumar, Director, in his address highlighted the development brought by the farmers and farmwomen in the field of agriculture showcasing India’s prosperity. He lauded the contribution of the farming community in conservation of plant and animal biodiversity. He emphasized on the development and refinement of more women friendly technologies to ease the double burden of farm women in managing home and farm due to massive male migration from rural areas. In his address, he made special mention of increasing the access of farmwomen to quality seeds and resources through community participation and market through cooperatives and farmer producer organizations. As Bank Kisan Credits have exceeded 1,42,000 crores now, farmwomen should avail the benefits of Kisan credit cards. These will strengthen the marketing avenues. Dr Sabita Mishra, Principal Scientist expressed her satisfaction over the success of farmwomen in all sectors like crop production, animal husbandry, fishery and mushroom production. Dr Arun Kumar Panda, Principal Scientist, ICAR-CIWA, elaborated the need of empowering farmwomen in family poultry production and appraised the participants to take benefits of schemes of ICAR-CIWA like SCSP, MGMG and Nutri Smart village programmes. Dr Lipi Das, Principal Scientist, appreciated the women’s participation in the programme and she stressed upon increase in income of women along with production.

On this occasion, an awareness campaign was also organized on Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmer’s Rights (PPV&FR) Act, 2001 for the participating farmers and staff of ICAR-CIWA. A lecture was delivered by Dr Laxmipriya Sahoo, Senior Scientist, ICAR-CIWA and Dr Tania Seth, Scientist, ICAR-CIWA for awareness generation among the participants related to protecting their rights in the areas of farm innovations, breeding and protection of varieties including PPV&FR Act, BDA, NBA and conservation of varieties. They discussed issues of farm women in multiplication of their seeds, their ownership over their own seed as an important family & community resource, registration of farmer’s varieties and benefit sharing.

The participants watched the direct webcast of Hon’ble Prime Minister of India interacting with people and watched Prime Minister’s address online arranged by ICAR-CIWA at Technology Block of the Institute. In his address he discussed on different schemes of the Government touching the life of crores of Indians. During his webcast, people from all states of the country were connected and shared their experience directly with the Prime Minister of India. During his address he released Krishak Samman Nidhi to more than 10 crores of farmers.

On this occasion of Garib Kalyan Sammelan, a farmer scientist interface was also organized in which scientists from ICAR-CIWA and ICAR-IIWM interacted with the farm women and other participants and discussed new technologies and constraints faced by them. Dr Biswanath Sahoo delivered a lecture highlighting various programmes and policies being implemented by state and central governments for the benefit of farmwomen. They provided technical solutions to their problems. The participants visited the CIWA farm and learned from different demonstrations of women friendly farming models.

About 500 participants from 20 villages from different districts of Odisha including staff of ICAR-CIWA attended and benefited during this programme. These enlightened farmers and farmwomen to carry forward our country’s vision for development in agriculture and allied sectors. The programme was successfully organized by all the scientific, technical and administrative staff of ICAR-CIWA. Dr Biswanath Sahoo, Nodal Officer for this programme offered the vote of thanks.