Yadvendra Ram Tripathi, of Sariyya village under the Khajni development block in Gorakhpur district, a graduate, spurned the offer of a government job and took up farming in his native village. Thanks to Agricultural Technology Management Agency (ATMA) under the Centrally sponsored ‘support to state extension programme for extension reforms’ project, Yadav, one of the richest farmers in the area, has no regrets.

With the technical assistance and training provided by the ‘National Vegetable Research Institute’ (NVRI), Varanasi, arranged by the ATMA, Yadvendra planted bananas, potato, maize and other vegetables in his plot of land.

Today there are several thousand such farmers who have benefited from the ATMA, across the state, which is being implemented in all the districts of the state. The scheme evolved following the National Agriculture Commission report, the report of the Expenditure Commission and the Approach Paper of the Tenth Five Year Plan.

“For over five decades banks are financing the farmers for purchasing tractors and other agricultural implements but it never occurred to anybody that the farmers also need operations skills to use and repair those machine. We are collecting data from tractors dealers in each district of the tractors sold by them in last five years and we will impart training to each farmer”, said Chandra Shekhar Singh, director of the State Institute of Management of Agriculture, the agency looking after the implementation of the extension project ATMA.

“Each year we are training over 5,000 farmers and several times more are getting exposure through ‘Krishi Melas’ at the district level and we have drawn plans to increase this number manifold in next few years”, added Singh.

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