Sh. Mohinder Singh Rasina, Member, Project Monitoring Committee (PMC) from Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), visited the operational area under 
ICAR project “Integrated Approaches for Livestock Development: Farmer’s Context” of Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, under Farmer FIRST programme. Dr H.K. Verma, Director Extension Education- cum- Nodal Officer of this project informed that, this project is operational in five villages viz; Channanwal, Moom, Kalala, MehalKalan and Dhaner of block Mehalkalan, District Barnala. The farm families rearing milch animals were selected under this project as beneficiary families. Under this project, various field activities like training camps, deworming camps, field/awareness days are already going on in the operational area. Dr Verma revealed that 'Farmer FIRST' Programme was sanctioned for a period of 2 years. In this project five to six villages under cluster approach were selected after conducting Baseline/ Benchmark
survey, the knowledge and adoption of different scientific livestock and farming management practices. These activities helped in identification of actual problems faced by the farmers. He appraised that we are doing various interventions such as Trainings (On campus, off-campus and vocational), Front Line Demonstration, On Farm Testing, Demonstrations, Scientist-Farmer-interactions, field visits, survey and data collection, exposure visits and infertility camps in operational area.
Dr S K Kansal, Principal Investigator of this project informed that the farm families were provided with various farm inputs such as maize seeds, napier hybrid bajra saplings, silo bags, vegetable kits, mineral mixture, Uromin licks, farm literature, deworming medicine etc. free of cost. A team comprising Dr Jaswinder Singh, Dr Rajesh Kasrija and Dr Y S Jadoun, Co-principal Investigators also visited the operational area along with Project Monitoring Committee and appraised them about various farm activities going on under this project. The PMC committee interacted with the beneficiaries’ families and got enthusiastic feedback from farmers as majority of farming families reported this project as a beneficial project. Sh. Mohinder Singh Rasina, Member, Project Monitoring Committee from ICAR, appreciated project team efforts and said that such interventions should also be replicated in other operational areas.
