Sahakar Bharati and National Mission for Clean Ganga jointly organised a ‘Vishaal Kisan Sammelan’ workshop for more than 400 farmers at Mubarikpur Bangar village in Bulandshahr district of Uttar Pradesh. The workshop was part of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between NMCG and Sahakar Bharti to set up at least 75 Ganga Sahakar Grams in the Ganga basin to promote natural farming and other interventions under Arth Ganga.
D.N. Thakur, National President, Sahakar Bharati in his inaugural address said that Sahakar Ganga Grams is an all-encompassing programme that trains farmers in not only readying their farms but also crop diversification, how to keep crops safe, proper marketing, technical capacity building, and improve the livelihood standards of farmers.
The MoU between NMCG and Sahakar Bharti was signed in the presence of the Union Minister for Jal Shakti Shri Gajendra Singh Shekhawat on 16th August, 2022 on the occasion of ‘Yamuna Par Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav’. It was reported extensively in these columns.
The MoU envisages to achieve the vision of a sustainable and viable economic development by public participation and creation and strengthening of local cooperatives directing their cooperation towards realizing the mandate of Arth Ganga.
Apart from more than 400 farmers from Uttar Pradesh, the event saw participation from district-level officials, State Mission for Clean Ganga, Uttar Pradesh, Wildlife Institute of India, Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan, Ganga Vichar Manch and other volunteers.
A field tour to the farms of farmer Upendra Nagar was also organised during which technicalities of natural farming were shown to the participating farmers and officials.
Recently, from 18th to 22nd August 2022, NMCG facilitated an exposure visit of about 30 farmers from the Ganga Basin to the Subhash Palekar Natural Farming (SPNF) training-cum-workshop camp being organised in Shirdi, Maharashtra.
Addressing the gathering, Director General G. Asok Kumar said that the association between NMCG and Sahakar Bharati is enabling a positive environment in the field of sustainable agriculture and zero budget natural farming. The collaboration focuses on the novel initiative of setting up Ganga Sahakar Grams in Ganga basin and no stone will be left unturned to make it into a successful model and replicate in other villages.
“This initiative focuses on employment generation through natural farming and will go a long way to serve the twin objectives of sustainable agricultural development and mitigating the effects of climate change,” Shri Asok said, adding, “Many more of such meetings will be organised by NMCG in near future.”
