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Our Correspondent
Kohima, Aug. 18 (EMN): The department of Soil and Water Conservation, under the scheme of Integrated Land Development (ILD), had utilised an amount of INR 300 lakh (INR 3 crore) during 2019-20, under negotiated loan (schemes under earmarked sector), to develop 168 ha. of permanent bench terracing, 50 rain harvesting ponds, and 140 units of vermicompost for organic manure inputs in 62 projects covering 11 districts of Nagaland state.
The department stated this in its annual administrative report of 2019-20.
According to the report, the state is confronted with a situation in which ‘not only soil has to be conserved but a sustainable infrastructural development that can give modification or alternative to shifting cultivation needs to be evolved to enable people to produce sufficient food grain for their sustenance, growth and well-being in addition to conservation of ecology and environment’.
It stated that the surest ways of achieving these objectives are to accept the land development with terracing in the hilly slopes, land development in rolling terrain by using heavy machinery and organic manure application of the developed areas for permanent cultivation of crops.
Therefore, large-scale development of land, water harvesting pond and vermicomposting is imperative, it added.
The department stated that water management has been taken up as a state-earmarked sector scheme in order to create infrastructure for increasing crop production; and to stabilise the degradation under rural infrastructure development fund (RIDF), negotiated loan from National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development has been sanctioned with an outlay of INR 1,538.40 lakh.