INDIACSR News Network
LANJIGARH: Vedanta Aluminum Ltd, Lanjigarh in association with District Agriculture department of Kalahandi has come forward to facilitate farmers to grow cotton. Cotton has an assured market and demand and will yield handsome income on a sustainable basis. To demonstrate a cropping system in which there will be an assured farm gate price for the farmers.
Creating better livelihood opportunities for a sustainable income to the farmers of all and around the plant, Vedanta has organized a Cotton training program at Lanjigarh where about hundred of farmers joined. The training cum awareness program on Cotton cultivation was inaugurated by Mr Narayan Upadhyay, District Cotton Specialist in the presence of Koustav Ratan Kundu (Head HR-VAL) along with the farmers and Vedanta officials. Mr.Upadhyay Praised Vedanta Aluminum Ltd for doing such type of work to the farmers of this remote area under its Sustainable livelihood initiatives .His team briefly described the training on cotton field preparation, Seed treatment, Seed sowing, fertilizer & other pesticides spraying, Multi cropping and harvesting. Mock training as well as video clips has been arranged to get better knowledge about the farming to the farmers.
The program was held in collaboration with District Agriculture Department, Kalahandi (Technical Support) and Subject Matter Specialist Cotton), Kalahandi. (Cotton Seed).Cotton seeds has been providing free of cost to the farmers by Govt. agriculture department from “Subject matter specialist cotton”, Bhawanipatna and VAL is providing pesticides (Admire & Bavistin ) for the treatment of cotton Seeds.
The first phase of distribution of agriculture inputs (Cotton Seeds) had taken place on the 1st week of July at Niyamagiri Vedanta Nagar (NVN) where total of 77 farmers from 14 villages with 113 acres of land have received 300 Kg Cotton seeds ,amongst which 30 farmers are project affected PAPs.
In this program the farmers of Basantapada, Harekrushnapur, Balabhadrapur, Nangalbeda, Raghunathpur, Sindhbahal, Chhatrapur and Kutingpadar received and gave thanks to Vedanta for arranging such type of the farming materials near their Village. Similarly Niharika Sahoo,Binod Rath,Basudev Majhi ,Kesab Majhi ,Punguri Majhi has participated in the program and make awareness among the farmers for  the usage of pesticide and cultivation .
