OREANDA-NEWS. October 31, 2012. Tata Chemicals, India’s leading crop nutrition and agri solution manufacturers and marketers, organised a certification programme for its first batch of skilled farm equipment operators trained under the Farm Technician Certification Programme on October 25, 2012 in New Delhi.

Senior management from Tata Chemicals and dignitaries awarded the degrees to 20 farm technicians who successfully completed the programme. The key objective of this programme is to empower the farming community by providing technical skills and training to unemployed rural youth for gainful employment in local villages.

R Mukundan, managing director, Tata Chemicals, said, “As mechanisation caught up with rising demand, lack of trained manpower at local level surfaced. Without adequately skilled and locally available manpower it is not possible to address the gap in agriculture productivity and food production. Unlike the hospitality, medical or engineering sector, which has skilled manpower, there is a huge need for skill development in agri sector. This programme is a pioneering step in providing necessary skills to ensure gainful local employment and at the same time address rural migration. It is a small effort on our part to institutionalise skill development and make a positive difference to the farming community by ensuring its economic prosperity and creating an environment for informed decision making.”

RP Meena, DG, National Institute of Agricultural Marketing, the academic partner for evaluating and certifying technicians, said, “This pioneering programme is a very positive initiative towards providing skills necessary for improving Indian agriculture through a structured training programme to rural unemployed youth. We’re glad to partner this initiative by certifying the technicians on completion of this programme. We’re also happy with the kind of response it has garnered for the first batch and we wish it a grand success in the years to come.”

The Farm Technician Certification Programme is a year long classroom plus on-the-job training, which seeks to instill the fundamentals of operating high tech farm equipments like rotavator, laser leveler, seed cum ferti drill, reaper, etc blended with theoritical lessons on land leveling, deep ploughing, crop sowing, nutrition and protection to rural youth who were unable to pursue education due to certain reasons. The company has partnered with John Deere, leading farm equipment manufacturers, to impart technical training in farm equipments for the programme.