Government of Punjab, through speaker Punjab Vidhan Sabha S. Kultar Singh Sadhwan and Minister of Agriculture, Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal in association today honoured a Ludhiana based Community Farm, My Family Farmer amongst 60 other farmers from different districts of Punjab who have contributed immensely to the environment and pesticides free agriculture. Mr Maneet Dewan today received the award on behalf of My Family Farmer. The event was organised by Kheti Virasat Mission an organisation that has been working for the 30 years in Punjab for promoting organic farming.
Community Farming, Kitchen Gardening, Millets, farmers who have not been burning stubble and others were the 5 categories in which these awards were given.
My Family Farmer is the brain child of Amrita Mangat and Rohit Gupta who are otherwise entrepreneurs who have been associated with KVM since long but since not many farmers around Ludhiana were growing organic vegetables they wanted to start their own farm as a model farm. This was in 2017 when their acquaintance Maneet Dewan offered his acre of land to do this experiment. Few members joined in but the group faced many challenges in its initial stage. Vipan Chabra, Dr Renu Beri, Dr Tajinder Kaur were few of the founder members. Gradually the clan grew and now they have 55 families who are enjoying healthy organic vegetables. To meet the growing numbers another member Chander Kant Jain and Lokesh Jain offered their land and now the Vegetables are grown on 4 acres of land. The members also source organic grocery from farmers and purchase on cost basis. One of the members Vipan Chabra is also growing organic strawberry in 2000 yards
Farmers were invited to share their experiences and give suggestions to the Government for promoting organic farming in Punjab.
The minister announced that a new agriculture policy and organic farming policy is under process and is expected to be announced by March 2023 with special provisions in the budget. The government wants to bring back Punjab to its original stage of agriculture encouraging multi crop systems, bio diversity, millets and pulses.
