Farmers Club awards ceremony reiterates Organic State resolve

AMEET OBEROI
GANGTOK, Feb 25: “We can make Sikkim a Switzerland, the dream of the Chief Minister, in its true sense, but for this to happen, we all need and have to work together,” said Dawcho Lepcha, Minister for Animal Husbandry, Livestock and Veterinary Services Department.
He was speaking at the Farmers Club awards function to felicitate Best Performing Farmers Clubs at the National level during the years 2007-08 & 2008-09 and at State level during the year 2009-10 organized by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development [NABARD] at Hotel Denzong Regency here today.

While addressing the various members of Farmers Clubs from across the State, he stated that Sikkim is aiming to become an Organic State by 2014, but this would only be possible only if the departments of Agriculture, Horticulture and Animal Husbandry and the farmers, worked together making overall organic progress from the grassroots.
“On the way to becoming an organic state one must bear that the start is small and less rewarding, but one must not forget that everything in the beginning is hard, so keep faith and perseverance and then you will see your hard work bear fruits,” he said. “In Sikkim as land holdings are small therefore we can produce low volumes but high quality yields, but to attain this too we need to have micro-planning from much ahead, so that we know what crop to plant and when to harvest and then again be ready for the next crop much before hand,” he further stated.
Earlier, while congratulating the awardees, he told them that this was just the beginning and that now they have to work much harder and asked them not become complacent. He also remarked that NABARD was doing a great job in the state in its various capacity by helping the farmers and also by holding capacity building programmes in the rural areas of the state.
Meanwhile, speaking earlier, BK Dey [General Manager, NABARD] gave a brief history of NABARD and its association with Farmers Clubs [FCs] in Sikkim. He said that all this started in the year 1982, but it was only in 2005, that it took off. He further said that to help the FCs initially, NABARD gives a financial assistance of Rs. 10,000 to the Club per year for a period of three years and then the club has to sustain itselfs, he added. The aim of NABARD is to open one lakh FCs by March, 2012 all over the country and till January, 2011, 70,000 FCs had already been opened all across the country, he said and added that there were a total of 355 FCs in Sikkim and most of the clubs had been opened through non governmental organizations [NGOs] and that there were 22 NGOs working along with NABARD. The aim of NABARD in Sikkim was to open atleast one FC in each village of the state.
SP Bala [Regional Manager, State Bank of India] also addressed the gathering, where he informed that by 31 March, 2010, two more SBI branches, one at Yangyang and another at Ranka will be opened. Thirteen more branches of the SBI will be opened in different villages of the state in the coming future, he further added. He also added that commercial banks in the state will be promoting Farmers Clubs in Sikkim.
While two Farmers Clubs received the National Awards for the Best Performing Farmers Clubs at National level for the years 2007-08 & 2008-09, three Farmers Clubs received it for the State level for the year 2009-10.