Agriculture sector lagging behind for want of proper data management system

BIRENDRANAGAR, JANUARY 20

Secretary of Karnali Province Ministry of Land Management, Agriculture and Cooperatives, Rajendra Prasad Mishra has termed ‘inadequacy of data’ as the prime weakness in the agriculture sector.

Making his concluding remarks at a three-day ‘Province-level Orientation on Farmers’ Indexing System’ organised by the Ministry of Agriculture Development, Kathmandu, and coordinated by Karnali Province Ministry of Land Management, Agriculture and Cooperatives yesterday, he claimed that data was the main basis for planning and development in any sector. “If there is any problem prevailing in agriculture, that is data. We are lagging behind in carrying out our works because of lack of data. We could not do proper work in agriculture in the absence of factual data of farmers,” he noted. “We can prepare a framework for perspective development once we enter data into the system,” Secretary Mishra claimed.

“Currently, there are 298,000 households in Karnali Province. We can go close to the ground reality by collecting data of 250,000 households.

Registration of farmers will start from mid-February once the training is conducted across the country,” Mishra added.

He said categorisation of farmers can be done in the second phase only after collection of data.

Joint Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture Prakash Kumar Sanjel said it was a mega campaign of the government to register farmers and manage their classification through software.

The chiefs of agriculture and livestock service office of all 10 districts of Karnali who attended the programme said agriculture was the main source of livelihood of humans, so the state mechanism should come up with data-based planning to promote agriculture in the country.