A building is being constructed near Hebbal in Bengaluru exclusively for hosting International Trade Fair on Millets and Organics.
DH FILE PHOTO
Bengaluru: The Agriculture department’s upcoming annual International Trade Fair on Millets and Organics is expected to be truly global this time with several countries confirming their participation.
The fair, to be held at Bengaluru’s Palace Grounds from January 23-25, will include an international conference on “Transformation of Agrifood Systems Through Agroecology: A global and regional perspective.”
The conference has 16 international speakers (representing international institutions located abroad), while another 17 similar institutions in India will also participate in the event.
The department is collaborating with the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) and the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FIBL) in Switzerland. Delegates from countries such as Germany, Switzerland, USA, Spain, Australia, Kenya, Tanzania etc will participate in the conference.
Additionally, invites have been sent to all the states in India, with around 25 states expected to participate.
“The current edition will be much bigger in scale than the previous ones. We are constructing a building near Hebbal for this purpose. This will be very helpful to farmers,” Agriculture Minister N Chaluvarayaswamy told DH.
The edition’s novelty includes exclusive pavilions on landraces and soil pedon, alongside extensive culinary competitions on forgotten fruits and millets.
Puthra G T, director of the Agriculture department, noted that preserving landraces and setting up seed banks is a budgetary announcement of the state government.
“The exclusive pavilion will include numerous stalls where several varieties of landraces preserved by farmers would be showcased. They will bring in varieties of paddy, jowar and other agriculture crops conserved by them over the decades,” he added.
Puthra felt the soil pedon pavilion would help the general public to go beyond the top layer and pointed out that they will get to see the whole monoliths of different types of soil (red soil, black soil, laterite soil and so on).
“They can appreciate how the soil has been formed, the reasons for different colours, how it has evolved over the years, what the parent material is and so on.”
Culinary competitions are being conducted in 30 districts (Bengaluru Urban and Rural being considered one). The competitions include millets and forgotten fruits from different regions that were used by earlier generations.
Agriculture minister and officials from different states, including officials of the Union Government will participate in the event.
A curtain raiser Millet Run will be held on January 19th from Hebbal, for which around 2,000 people have already registered.