The book titled “Planning and managing agricultural projects,” published by PAMETI under the guidance of Dr SPS Brar, Director, PAMETI, and written by the faculty of GNIMT, PAU and PAMETI was released at GNIMT on Friday. Six faculty members of GNIMT contributed chapters in the book under the leadership of Dr H S Singha, Director GNIMT, other members of the team were Amanpreet Singh Brar, Inderpreet Kaur, Vikramjit Singh, Rajni Sofat and Preeti Hiro.

“The people concerned with the development of the farming sector need to be made aware of the nitty gritty of projects management. The book caters to these concerns as it deals with various components of projects management,” said Dr (Col) HS Singha, director of GNIMT, who also contributed to the book.

The main aim of the book is to cater to the needs of the extension staff of the Department of Agriculture and allied departments. Govt of India wants to equip them with the knowledge about the development of projects in agriculture sector because agriculture is the main stay of country’s economy. It is essential that this sector should grow at a reasonable rate. But due to pressure of population and slow investment in this sector the growth rate is only near 2 per cent, which is nullified.

“The farmers lack knowledge about gauging market potential, financial estimates and projection. When made aware of them, they can draw better gains from the projects,” said Inderpreet Kaur Kular, who authored the chapter on “Market potential and sales forecasting.” Rajni Sofar authored a chapter on “Financial estimates and projections.”

Talking about risk analysis, Preeti Hiro, one of the six authors from GNIMT, said it is necessary to know about the risk factors of the project undertaken and then analyse them so that they can be avoided.

In order to cater to this need, the government has launched a Central sector scheme “Support to state extension programme” for reforms in agricultural extension on 90:10 basis. The schemes envisaged are farmers participatory bottom up planning, decentralized administration, promotion of market led farmers to farmers extension and involvement of women and private sector in transfer of technology and management skills.

In the implementing of this plan, it becomes necessary to transfer the knowledge about “Planning and marketing the agricultural projects” to the extension officers and in turn to the farmers. With the joint efforts of PAMETI, GNIMT and faculty from PAU, the book containing chapters on “Project Objectives, Policies and Components, a Systematic Approach, Generation and Screening of Project Ideas, Project Formulation, Risk analysis etc.” has been introduced.