A brainstorming meet on Aquaculture Field School (AFS) was held on February 5 at the farm of Kailash Chandra Sahoo, Subarnapur in Gop area of Puri district. The meet was held to elicit the opinions and suggestions of the operator farmer as well as the participant fish farmers who are receiving extension advisory services.
The stakeholders comprising line departments, KVK, Aqua One Center, NFDB, NGO, farmers associations present in the meeting evinced interest about AFS and shared ideas about its scaling up and replication.
Constraints and challenges faced by operator farmer in running AFS were also discussed. Director, ICAR-CIFA Dr Saroj Kumar Swain inaugurated the meet and informed that the CIFA has established 8 AFSs in different parts of Odisha, West Bengal and Chattisgarh. The approach has become quite popular and during Covid pandemic, this has assumed greater significance. Head of Social Science Section Dr GS Saha gave a brief description about the functions of AFS.
AFS is a school without walls for improving the decision-making capacity of the farmers and facilitate cross learning opportunities. It promotes farmer to farmer extension, he told.
Among others present were Dr Manas Kumar, Dr Sanjay K Mohanty, Nakul Mallick, Sarat Moharana, Dr HK De, Dr CK Mishra, AS Mahapatra. A scientist-farmer interface was also organised as a part of this programme. Around 50 farmers and farm women attended.
