Of the total of 26 Lead Farmers under CARLEP from the six Eastern Dzongkhags, 24 Lead Farmers (20 male and 4 female) attended the third course of the Lead Farmers on ‘Crop Management Technologies.’

Both theoretical and practical sessions on various crop management practices like Plant Protection practices (conventional and organic practices), soil fertility management, water management technologies, seed selection for maize, fruit thinning and nursery raising for maize were taught to the participants by the Resource person (s) from ARDC.

The third course for the Lead Farmers on the Crop management technologies was following the second course on ‘crop establishment and management practices’ and the first course on ‘awareness on farming technology options’ that was conducted on  17 – 22^nd January, 2017 and 23 – 25^th November 2016 respectively.

The training on the last Course for the Lead Farmers on ‘Post-harvest and Marketing’ will be done tentatively by August 2017. Upon the completion of the last course, these 26 Lead Farmers’ will be certified as the ‘1^st batch of Lead Farmers’ under CARLEP, who will then be responsible for Farmers-to-Farmers Extension in order to stretch out the Extension Outreach Services, by working closely with the respective geog’s agriculture extensions.

The five days training from 22 – 27^th May, 2017 on the third course of the Lead Farmers on ‘Crop management technologies’ was conducted at ARDC, Wengkhar, under CARLEP’s funding.

-PC: Sangay Jamtsho (Communication Officer at ARDC).

-Reported by: Karma Wangmo (GKMO, CARLEP).