DHAKA, Sept 23, 2020 (BSS) – The government will appoint agricultural engineers at the field-level after setting up a concerned wing at the department of agricultural extension for providing support to the growers and the local entrepreneurs.
This will be done under the phenomenon of farm mechanization which is now a major thrust for the sector, Agriculture Minister Dr Abdur Razzaque today said.
“The agriculture ministry is working to set up an agricultural engineering wing at the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) to recruit concerned field-level engineers who will help the growers adopt farm mechanization”, he said while inaugurating an annual workshop here.
The government is giving importance on agricultural mechanization as mechanization in the sector instead of traditional labour-intensive one is very much necessary for ultra modern and more profitable agriculture.
“A project of Taka 3,020 crore has also been taken by the government to make the agriculture mechanization popular among the people. National Agriculture Mechanization Policy-2020 also has been formulated to this end”, he added.
Bangladesh Agriculture University Professor Dr M Manjurul Alam presented the keynote paper at the workshop.
Chaired by Prasanta Kumar Kalita, director of Appropriate Scale Mechanization Consortium(ASMC), a USAID funded project working for empowering small farmers through mechanizations solution, the workshop also was addressed, among others, by Bangladesh Agriculture University (BAU)Vice Chancellor Professor Dr Lutful Hasan, Kansas State University researcher with the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Sustainable Intensification director PV Vara Prasad, BAU’s Emiratus Professor M A Sattar Mondol, ex chairman of Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) Dr Waes Kabir and ex DAE DG M Hamidur Rahman.
Stressing the need for agriculture mechanization, the minister said the traditional labour-intensive agriculture is usually raising the production cost of the crops which need to be cost-effective through the mechanization.