CABI South Asia Pakistan has trained 1000 farmers of Bajaur, Mohmand and Khyber agencies of the tribal region of Pakistan in prevention of plants, insects and plant disease. CABI South Asia is implementing its Integrated Crop Management (ICM) through Farmers Field Schools (FFS) under Fata Rural Development Programme (FRDP) Project in tribal agencies.
The closing ceremony of Integrated Crop Management (ICM) was held at the office of Bureau of Agricultural Information. The event was attended by Project Manager, Mohammad Zahir Shah, Project Co-ordinator, Mian Zakiullah and a large number of farmers from Bajaur, Mohmand and Khyber Agencies of the tribal region. Member of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, Fazalullah Khan was the chief guest on the occasion.
Addressing the seminar, Mohammad Zahir Shah said that CABI South Asia Pakistan has started work on three kind of tunnel farming for production of off season vegetables. He said that farmers would be selected for training. They would be trained of modern technicalities of the farming, which would play the role of task force in future.
For increasing the capacity of farmers, CABI has established more than 44 Farming Fields Schools (FFS) to benefit the farming community in Fata. Mian Zakiullah Project Co-ordinator FRDP said that the project was started in light of the joint survey of CABI and FRDP conducted in 2002. Asian Development Bank is extending 70 percent financial assistance and the remaining amount will be shared by the government of Pakistan and community itself.
The five-year project has been started in 2006 and will continue till December 2011. The objective of the project is the development of infrastructure establishing farm to market link, promotion of agriculture, forest and livestock and capacity of the farmers. The project is working in three tribal agencies of Bajaur, Mohmand and Khyber Agencies.
FRDP is being run on participatory basis and 1400 to 1500 committees (jirgas) have been constituted for it. Badshah Alam, Cabi Team Leader, Bajaur Agency, Adil Naseem (Khyber Agency), Ahmad Khan (Kissan) and other farmers from the agency also spoke on the occasion, Later, the chief guest Fazalullah Khan MPA distributed shields amongst the participants.