Daijiworld Media Network - Mangalore (SP)

Mangalore, Jul 11: K Monappa Karkera, recepient of the state-level 'Krishi Pandit' award and a member of the Board of Regents, Karnataka Veterinary, Animal and Fisheries Sciences University, has advised farmers to take to allied activities to come out of financial problems they find themselves in.

He was addressing a seminar on new technology in pisciculture organized at the College of Fisheries in the city on Thursday July 10.

He asked the department of agriculture to lay more stress on guiding farmers to branch into other activities in addition to agriculture, rather than advising them to change cropping patterns or growing multiple crops. Karkera, himself a farmer from near Puttur, said that farmers are knee-deep in financial trouble because of their reluctance to take up additional activities. Future generations may refuse to take agriculture as a profession because of this state of affairs, he warned. There is a crying need to convince farmers as also their family members that farming can be a profitable profession. Farmers can improve their financial standing by pursuing allied activities in their spare time, he opined.

Avoiding of middlemen is a very important need for the farmers to get good price for their produce. This will benefit both the buyers and the sellers, he asserted.

College of Fisheries department of aquaculture Prof K M Shankar said that there is tremendous scope for fresh water pisciculture in the district. The perception that marine fish is preferred to fresh water fish is wrong in the present scenario, he argued. Saying that the climate of the district is ideal for taking up pisciculture, he pointed out that cuttlefish grown recently near Bajpe in fres hwater were of a size that was much more than we find in sea or rivers.

H P C Shetty, director of instruction of the college, inaugurated the seminar. He said, he foresees a great role for the college in the future in popularizing fisheries and aquaculture in the region. People need to be trained and made aware of the technicalities to make pisciculture a very profitable venture, he said.