K’taka rolls out 40 mobile agro clinics to help farmers

Bengaluru, Jan 7 : Karnataka on Thursday formally launched ‘Krishi Sanjeevini’ (mobile agro clinics) to help farmers in their own backyards. As part of this scheme, 40 mobile agro clinics were rolled from outside the Vidhana Soudha.
Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa, along with his cabinet colleagues, Deputy CM Lakshman Savadi, Agriculture Minister B.C. Patil and Cooperation Minister S.T. Somashekhar, green flagged these laboratories which will offer the farmers a range of free services such as soil testing, seed testing, pest control and several other tests. All these years, farmers had to travel far to the nearest laboratory to get such tests done.
After launching these vehicles, Yediyurappa said, “This project will help farmers statewide by working with authorities under the agriculture and cooperative ministries to solve the problems that farmers encounter in farming.” The Chief Minister added that the main objective of this project is to reduce the cost of production. “Farmers can buy quality fertilisers at their own level and even find cheap alternatives. These labs will help them check if the fertilisers are adulterated or not,” he said.
Yediyurappa added that these labs will also help the government in planning as they will be able to provide accurate reports on what are the necessary actions to be taken to improve the conditions in agriculture.
Agriculture Minister Patil said that he is happy to launch “Agro lab on wheels”, which will help farmers get simple tests like plant diseases, seed tests and soil tests done. “Production also depends on natural disasters like cyclone, heavy rain, soil erosion, overgrowth of weed and several other aspects linked to climate change, which can also be tested at their doorsteps now,” he said.