Three day National Conference of Society of Veterinary and Animal Husbandry Extension (SVAHE) which was organized in collaboration with NABARD concluded today i.e. 20 November, 2015 at Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (GADVASU), Ludhiana. Dr. Harish Kumar Verma, Director Extension Education GADVASU and organizing secretary SVAHE told that the conference was attended by more than 150 scientists, academicians, researchers and postgraduate students from 14 states of the country. The theme of the conference was “Push to Livestock Farming through Knowledge Empowerment of the Farmers”. There were five technical sessions namely Livestock Farming/ Entrepreneurship, Livestock Extension Policy Framework, Knowledge Dissemination Tools, Women/ Youth Centred Opportunities and Technologies for Sustainable Livestock Production. The last session of the conference was chaired by Dr. S.N.S. Randhawa, Director of Research, GADVASU. He encouraged the role of women and youth in dairy sector and emphasized that more dairy extension trainings should be planned for this group. During the conference, the “Budding Extensionist Award” was conferred to Dr. B. Channappagouda, Bidar, Karnataka and Dr. S. A. Khandi, SKAUST, Jammu for devising better strategies for transfer of knowledge from labs to land. Besides, best Oral and Poster research presentations were also awarded. Dr. K.B. Singh, President of society remarked that the conference had provided a common platform for all the stakeholders of animal husbandry to present their experiences with the extension fraternity. Dr. Verma anticipated that the conference will be able to provide a medium to address the challenges in livestock farming. He informed that the farmers have many misconceptions and orthodox thinking about livestock farming. These types of conferences can serve as a good platform for exchange of new innovations and technologies among scientists involved in extension work so that they can disseminate it to the farmers at door step. Dr. Jaswinder Singh Bhatti, Head, Department of Veterinary and Animal Husbandry Extension Education delivered a vote of thanks to all the delegates. He also stressed that GADVASU is also organizing many animal welfare trainings, camps and pashu palan melas from time to time for the benefit of farming community. The next conference of society will be held at Shere Kashmir University of Agriculture and Technology at Jammu.
