Know about KVK

1. Mandate of KVKs

In the beginning, the mandate of KVK was confined only to provide skill based training to the farmers, farm women and rural youth in crop production, horticulture, livestock production, fisheries, home science, farm machinery and implements and other allied vocations such as apiculture, mushroom cultivation etc. Besides, various extension activities such as field demonstration, field days, farmers’ fairs, exhibitions, radio/TV talks, film show, publication of farm leaflets, etc. were also carried out for creating awareness and to disseminate the agricultural technology. With the consolidation of other front-line extension projects of the Council during the Eighth Five Year Plan, such as National Demonstration Project (NDP), Operational Research Project (ORP), Lab to Land Programme (LLP) and All India Coordinated Project on Scheduled Caste/Tribe, the mandate was enlarged and revised to take up on-farm testing, long term vocational training, in service training for grass root extension workers and front-line demonstrations on major cereal, oilseed and pulse crops and other enterprises. The latest revised mandates of KVKs are as follows:

  1. To conduct “On farm Testing” for identifying technologies in terms of location specific sustainable land use systems.
  2. To organize frontline demonstrations on various crops to generate production data and feedback information.
  3. To organize training to update the extension personnel with emerging advances in agricultural research on regular basis.
  4. To organize short and long term vocational training courses in agriculture and allied vocations for the farmers and rural youth with emphasis on “learning by doing” for higher production on farms and generating self employment.

2. Functional Objectives of KVKs

For fulfilling the prescribed mandate, the KVKs, at present, has to perform the following functions:

  1. To plan and conduct survey of the operational area through Participatory Rural Appraisal(PRA) methods and characterize physical and human resources with special reference to identifying the technological and training needs of the farming community.
  2. To compile all relevant recommendations/package of practices for the district to be meaningfully utilized in the training programmes and the follow-up extension activities.
  3. To plan and conduct production-oriented and need-based short and long duration training courses both on the campus as well as in the villages for various target groups with priority on the resource poor sections.
  4. To organize Farm Science Clubs in order to inculcate in the younger generations a scientific temper and an interest on agriculture and allied sciences and for scientific farming through supervised individual and group projects.
  5. To develop and maintain the campus farms and demonstration units on scientific lines as the facilities for providing work experience to the trainees, dissemination of the latest technical know-how and also as a means to achieve financial sustainability in due course of time.
  6. To provide practical training facilities of the Kendra to the teachers and the students of vocational agriculture of the higher secondary schools.
  7. Provide added training facilities in the area for home making and nutrition education for rural communities and gradually enlarging the training facilities to encompass other important areas such as home/rural crafts and cottage industries with the requirements of the integrated rural development in collaboration with the concerned organizations.
  8. To implement all such schemes of the ICAR and other related organizations which intend to strengthen the training and technology dissemination programmes as well as follow-up extension activities of the Kendra.
  9. To undertake on-farm testing of the technologies developed by the National Agricultural Research System (NARS) in agriculture and allied fields for their suitability and identifying the constrains.
  10. To demonstrate the potentialities of various technologies and recommend for their adoption in maximizing yield/income per unit of time and area under different resource conditions.

3. Our KVK

The Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Lower Dibang Valley was established under Deptt. of Agriculture, Govt of Arunachal Pradesh in Dec 2005. The functioning of KVK was initially started from a District Agriculture Office at Roing (Distt HQ) with permission of the Director, Deptt. of Agriculture and later shifted to its administrative building located at Balek, 13 km away from the district headquarter.