Saturday, October 22, 2011

Indian climate meeting stresses indigenous knowledge

The Times of India: Indigenous knowledge of farmers of the country can be used to help tackle the vagaries of climate change, said planning commission agriculture advisor, V V Sadamate, during a climate change preparedness meet at ICAR research complex in Barapani. Chairman of the working group on climate change, K N Shelat said the media, farmers and research institutes should come forward to fight climate change vagaries at grass root level.

Some of the experts pointed out erratic rainfall over the past few years has caused great concern among farmers in the region. Loss of crops to beetles and wasps is also taking place more rapidly across the region, they said, emphasizing conservation must contain indigenous technological knowledge with modern ICT solutions.

"To mitigate climate aberrations at farmers' level, the ICAR institutes and the state agricultural departments have already defined roadmaps to disseminate climate resilient technologies to farmers," said Vandana Dwivedi, joint advisor agriculture, planning commission.

"Apart from ready-to-use innovative technologies, private-public partnership might have a voluminous role to play in providing information," said P S Minhas, additional director general, natural resource management at ICAR, Delhi....

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