Fishery Promotion

FARMERS FROM KALAHANDI DISTRICT VISITED 
CIFA AND CRRI IN FEBRUARY 2009

Visiting fish farmers with Scientists and Technical Officers at CIFA

A group of 22 farmers from Kalahandi district of Orissa visited Central Institute of Fresh water Aquaculture (CIFA), Kausalyaganga, Bhubaneswar during on 2^nd February 2009. They visited the brood fish pond, prawn nursery, prawn cultivation, rohu and other foshes cultivation ponds and nursery pond. The scientists Dr G S Saha, Dr Radheyshyam, Dr Kuldeep Kumar, Dr H K Dey, 
Dr D N Chattopadhyaya, Dr B K Das explained in details various aspects of pisciculture to the visiting farmers. On 03.02.2009, the farmers visited Central Rice Research Institute, Cuttack , Orissa. They visited integrated farming system, Azola cultivation, various farm implements, rice fish farming system at CRRI. Dr N C Ratha,  Sr Scientist, Dr Pritvijit Jana, Technical Officer, Dr P Mishra, Principal Scientist, Sri S M Chatterjee, Technical Officer guided the farmers at CRRI. The programme was organized with financial assistance from NABARD- Kalahandi.

Promotion of farm ponds and integrated fish farming:

SVA continues advocating for the construction of small irrigation system as part of the rain water harvesting. Western Orissa being rich with large number of traditional irrigation structures SVA has been developing suitable systems for utilization of these potential water resources. Despite of the huge potential of this area for pisciculture success cases was very few and SVA started analyzing reasons for this. SVA has initiated a programme to promote fishery in a big way and in this regard it has set up a modern hatchery in Nuapada district in collaboration with the CIFA and the State Watershed Mission. It has promoted 48 nursery ponds which are managed by women SHGs and community groups. The demand for fish seeds from SVA hatchery has significantly  increased and overall sale of fish seeds has also gone up. During the year 2006-07 from its own hatchery SVA has supplied a total of 35.5 lakhs spawn to farmers of its operational districts. 

This programme has been very much successful in the sense that more and more farmers are showing their interest to do pisciculture as benefits have already been accrued by many farmers in the locality. Government officials from district and state level those were not convinced about the possibility of large scale production of fish in western Orissa earlier are now quite hopeful. The state government has planned the programme in a bigger scale in coming years and SVA has a bigger role to play for its success. During the year SVA also organized few training programmes on management of farm ponds and small irrigation system. Altogether 361 persons  participated in those programmes and of which 55 are women and 306 men. See Annexure for details.