The country’s largest horticulture event, the five days National Horticulture Fair 2021 with the theme ‘Start up & Stand up India’ was inaugurated by Poojya Gurudev Sri Sri Ravishankar Ji on 8th Feb. 2021 at ICAR-IIHR, Hesaraghatta, Bengaluru. The event was graced by guests of honour, Dr. T. Mohapatra, Secretary, DARE & Director General, ICAR, and Dr. Anand Kumar Singh, DDG (Hort. Science), ICAR in virtual mode.
While welcoming the guests and all those joined the event, Dr. M.R. Dinesh, Director, ICAR-IIHR, informed that this year’s theme ‘Horticulture: For start-up and stand-up India’ is very aptly chosen for boosting the horticulture as an enterprise and to promote the ‘Atmanirbhar Krishi’ through entrepreneurship development. He also mentioned that >300 licenses have been issued and how entrepreneurship is growing in horticulture as there are avenues for it from seed production to value added products. Dr. Raghavendra Bhatta, Director, ICAR-NAINP, Bengaluru and Dr. V. Venkatasubramanian, Director, ICAR-ATARI, Bengaluru, were also present during the inaugural function. All the other officials of ICAR, Directors of institute and ATARI, VC’s from horticulture universities, Director of Horticulture Department, Head of KVK’s and representatives from private industry, press personnel, farmers and students also logged in to the event.
In his speech, Dr. Anand Kumar Singh stressed upon the importance of the Horticulture and its growing contribution to the Indian economy even during the pandemic situation. He commended the work being carried out by the ICAR-IIHR. He also mentioned how farm laws are beneficial to the farmers.
Dr. T. Mohapatra congratulated the institute for organising this kind of event, year after year for the benefit of the horticulture farmers and urged to make the “Krishi Labhdayak and Nature Friendly”. He emphasised to create awareness for nutrition security among the consumers for increasing the use of fruits and vegetables. He appreciated the efforts of ICAR-IIHR in connecting the stakeholders and spreading the knowledge of horticulture by organizing of such events. During the programme, he released a mobile app Árka Vyapar’ developed in collaboration with the Society for Promotion of Horticulture to connect buyers and sellers of horticulture produce and products.
Sri Sri Ravishankar Ji in his speech stressed that everyone has to go back to the natural farming, which is the not only environmentally safe but also provides nutritional security and health benefits. He expressed his desire that a greater number of farmers should get connected with such type of fairs and urged that that all the horticulture based ICAR institutes and department agencies should join together to make the country nutritionally secured. He advised everyone to growJackfruit and Drumstick trees along with vegetable and medicinal cropsin order to meet nutritional requirements and .health security. A ‘Jacolate’, jackfruit-based chocolate product was also released by the Guruji and same was licenced to a women entrepreneur.
An interactive session with the ICAR- ATARI of Karnataka, Kerala and Lakshadweep and associated KVKs to address the farmers’ problems of these zone was also organised during the first day. Several ICAR-IIHR technologies were displayed to the farmers of these zones through live streaming and videos during this session.
Many stakeholders, farmers and students showed their interest by participating in large number in the NHF. The event was cross-posted live through the ICAR social media page enabling everyone to participate virtually due to the prevailing pandemic situation. The organising secretary Dr. M.V. Dhanajaya, Organizing Secretary, NHF profusely thanked everyone for their support for this five-day fair and urged all the farmers and the stakeholders to join the event and be benefited.
