Thursday, January 27, 2011

Indian farmers are also investing in Ethiopia: says Workinesh Abede

Ludhiana, January 27:









\"In Ethiopia, GDP of agriculture is now growing at rate of more than 11 percent. Even some of the farmers from India has invested in Ethiopia as part of our national policy to invite people around the world," this was stated by Workinesh Abede, Director, Agricultural Mechanization Research Processing of Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research, who is leading the four member delegation to Central Institute of Post Harvest Engineering and Technology, for finding various areas of collaboration.





Revealing that agriculture in Ethiopia, an African country, is still very less mechanized, Workinesh Abede said that primarily Animals are used for plowing the fields by the vast majority of farmers. "Dependence on agriculture is quite huge. While more than 85 percent population is directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture, 55 percent of the country\'s GDP comes from agriculture," he said, adding that versatility in soil, irrigation and climatic conditions makes difficult for them to address the problems of farmers. \"Though, opportunity to turn large chunk of land lying waste into fertile is also lying untapped.\"





Abede said that sophisticated technologies developed by the European and American companies would not be of much use for them. "While these would be costlier to afford, we need simple and effective solution for our small farmers," he said, adding that India can help them a lot. "Our visit is aimed at curbing losses in Post harvest and developing a permanent system of collaboration with Indian institutes including CIPHET for getting technologies." He also revealed that Ethiopian government was now also inviting MNC's and leading farmers from other countries to invest in Ethiopian agriculture. "Recently, Indian farmer has bought one thousand hectare farm for agriculture," he said, adding that this would help in making their country a food sufficient nation.





During the interaction, Director CIPHET Dr R.T Patil, informed visitors about the mandate of CIPHET and various initiatives carried out by the institute in the area of post harvest. Dr Deepak Raj Rai, Head Transfer of Technology, told that visitors that more than 20 externally funded projects and two All India Coordinated Projects were also running from CIPHET. This institute is the only one in Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) to carry focused research in post harvest, he added. "Besides, training farmers and entrepreneurs, we have also initiated training programme in food processing for prisoners of Ludhiana central jail," he further revealed this to Ethiopian counterparts. Dr Nilesh Gaikwad, Scientist of the Transfer of Technology, took the visitors to various research facilities of CIPHET. They were also shown film focusing on technologies and mandate of CIPHET.
News From: http://www.7StarNews.com

No comments:

 
eXTReMe Tracker