CM inaugurates Guru Angad Dev Vet Univ.

Ludhiana, Jun 2 (UNI) Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh today expressed his hope that the Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (GADVASU), the first Veterinary Varsity in Punjab, would usher in 'White Revolution' thereby giving a desired push to the proposed diversification in agriculture in the state.

Speaking on the occasion after inaugurating the GADVASU dedicated to Sri Guru Angad Dev Ji on his 500th Birth Anniversary, Mr Singh said the state's agrarian sector had already reached a point of saturation with marginal returns to the farming community.

He said 22 per cent of the state's peasantry constituted of small and marginal farmers with less than 1 to 1.5 acres for which traditional agriculture was totally unsustainable and non-remunerative.

''We will have to shift to allied farming to ensure better returns to our farmers and make them self reliant otherwise they will be gradually vanished if not properly motivated towards diversification'', Mr Singh said.

He further said the state government had made concerted efforts to bring 15 per cent of the cultivable land under cooperative farming, ten per cent under horticulture and eight per cent under organic farming out of 33 per cent of cultivable land from 105 lac hectares of land in the state.

He said that GADVASU would be instrumental in promoting the livestock production, health and prevention of diseases through integrated teaching research and extension programmes and certainly give a boost to the agriculture diversification.

''The livestock sector in the state is growing at a good pace and its contribution to the state economy is constantly increasing.

But the productivity of livestock is not very high requiring intensive research in fields of genetics, breeding, veterinary microbiology and disease&effective health management,'' he said.

UNI XC PS MA KN1933