By Our Correspondent
BHUBANESWAR: A dissemination workshop titled, “Opportunity and Challenges for a Green Economic Recovery for Odisha” was organised today at the conference hall of Swosti Premium, Bhubaneswar for discussing the thirteen strategies of green recovery identified through stakeholder consultation in three districts of the state namely Bargarh, Kalahandi and Koraput. The stakeholders included government officials, representatives from academia, civil society, farming communities and green activists.
The dissemination workshop is an outcome of the year long process led by LEAD at Krea University, Tamil Nadu that involved survey of farmers, policy makers and experts from Odisha. In its formative phased held during April 2022, green agricultural activists like Shri Natabar Sarangi, representatives from different political parties universities, government including the then minister of Agriculture and Farmers welfare Government of Odisha, participated in the consultative process.
The dissemination workshop identified 13 different strategies for making Odisha’s agriculture greener and to take forward the green recovery process. These are, (1) Integrated Farming, (2) Use of Renewable Technology, (3) Millet cultivation, (4) Direct seeding of rice, (5) In-situ conservation of traditional seeds, (6) Natural soil regeneration practices, (7) Agroforestry, (8) Water conservation and storage, (9) Establishment of non –paddy processing units, (10) Organic certification, (11) Green entrepreneurship, (12) Establishment of effective drainage systems, and (13) Establishment of Green Economy Advisory Board
The study also identified several challenges in the way of green recovery. Those include behavioural gaps, infrastructural gaps, information gap, resource gap and policy gap. The study document released by LEAD at Krea University ranked these strategies as per their economic benefits and operational suitability while concluding that Odisha has all the preconditions needed for initiating a green recovery in agriculture.
The core research team for this strategy development included Dr. Debdual Thakur from LEAD at Krea University, Dr. Siba Sankar Mohanty from the Department of Analytical and Applied Economics, Utkal University, Akshay Mahadevan and Debasish Panda from LEAD at Krea University. The dissemination workshop ended with a call for definite actions for green recovery in Odisha and hinted at further research work that can provide necessary insights for the policy makers in this field.
The workshop started today with the welcome address by Dr. Debdulal Thakur from LEAD at Krea University. Noted policy analyst Dr. Kalyan Goswami, noted environmental and agricultural activist Shri Natabar Sarangi, Shri Jagadish Pradhan, noted agricultural economist from OUAT Dr. Sarba Narayan Mishra, etc. provided meaningful insights in the context of Odisha on each of the identified strategies, followed by a group discussion by the experts present. The workshop called for initiation of several peoples’ science action research projects on each of these strategies by involving practicing farmers from all the districts as the key participants in coming days.
