By Laxman Kafle
Kathmandu, Mar. 6: Farmer Listing, a nationwide campaign to list all the farmers across the country, is all set to be launched here on Saturday.
Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli is scheduled to inaugurate the programme, which was brought into operation through the tireless effort made by the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development, amidst a function in Kathmandu.
In line with the government plan of listing the farmers and classifying them, the ministry has aggressively pushed forward the process, said Dr. Shree Ram Ghimire, spokesperson for the ministry.
“A personal account of each household will be created after updating the basic information of the farmers, each of whom will get an identification number,” he said, adding, “The listing will mainly include details concerning the farmer registration, family, farming land and agriculture and animal husbandry.”
Agricultural groups, cooperatives, private firms and companies engaged in agricultural activities can list themselves in the information management system, developed with the help of European Union. And the federal, provincial and local governments will help the farmers.
Officials of provincial governments who are trained on the software will train those representing the local levels. Earlier, staff members of the ministry who had received training of the software had trained the officials of all seven provinces.
"We will complete the classification work of the farmers and distribution of their identity cards in the first phase. We will then carry out the agricultural programme in a systematic manner on the basis of that classification,” Ghimire said.
He added that the classification of the farmers would be a landmark event that would help in making agricultural programmes and subsidies more effective and efficient as they would directly reach the needy farmers.
“The actual information of farmers is a foundation on which agricultural development is carried out. We can bring specific programmes based on farmers’ status in terms of finance, land, income and other things,” he said.