State animal husbandry minister Nitin Raut on Tuesday said that a 100-day programme would be chalked out in a vision document aimed at bringing down suicides among Vidharbha farmers. The vision document 2015 will be prepared in 100 days and will be an effort to help the debt-ridden farmers of the Vidarbha region.

Raut was speaking after laying the foundation stone of the new building of the animal husbandry department at Aundh.

Raut pointed out that lack of funds for various scheme led to a neglect of the animal husbandry department. This is a crucial department that supports rural development. On the one hand there is sufficient milk production in Western Maharashtra whereas it is not enough in the Vidharbha region. Here lack of proper planning for promoting schemes that will help the Vidarbha farmers has led to an increase in the number of suicides. The minister clearly spelt out his agenda during the function of bringing down the suicide rate by promoting several such schemes in the vision document . We also need to promote schemes to increase fisheries, he pointed out. Raut also said that there was a need to upgrade polyclinics and provide mobile vans. Apart from recommending that the food processing unit should be attached to the animal husbandry section, Raut also urged that research at universities should be translated at the field level to benefit the farmers.