Govt rolls out KVK portal for monitoring of farm centres

Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh today launched an online portal designed to monitor functioning of nearly 645 Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs), known as farm-science centres, spread across the country.
The KVKs, which have a mandate to assess agri-technology and demonstrate to farmers application and capacity development, are being set up in rural districts. Each KVK has direct interface with at least 1,000 farmers.
"The KVK portal will provide information related to all schemes, market development and weather updates, besides advisory to farmers. This portal will also facilitate online monitoring of KVKs," Singh told reporters after the launch.
The portal is necessary because at present information related to KVKs is not available at one point for the monitoring purpose. Also, farmers and other stakeholders had a tough time in accessing details, he said.

Since KVKs play a key role in disseminating farm information at the grassroots level, the government is making efforts to strengthen them with a budget provision of Rs 300 crore, he added.
The portal will have a provision for online monitoring of KVKs, which includes submission of monthly reports.
It will also have information on different services being provided by different KVKs, weather and market updates, forthcoming programmes, besides question and answer facility for farmers. The agriculture details of the district will be made available on the portal.
Besides Singh, three ministers of state for agriculture S S Ahluwalia, Parshottam Rupala and Sudarshan Bhagat and senior ministry officials were present at the launch.