By Bijoy Handique

Jorhat: Assam Agriculture minister Atul Bora along with Dergaon MLA Bhaben Bharali among district agricultural officials visited the farm of India’s one of the progressive women farmer Nabanita Das at Charigaon Chapori under Jorhat district here today.

The minister congratulated Nabanita for achieving and bringing laurels for her progressive farming who was also awarded recently on the day of Women Farmer day at a function held at Pusa, New Delhi where Radha Mohan Singh, Minister of Agriculture, Government of India even lauded her role to take up farming as a profession which shows us the way when Prime Minister Narendra Modi trying to double the farmers income by 2022 is an appropriate example for all of us for the state of Assam, said Atul Bora, Minister for Agriculture while interacting with this correspondence.

To mentioned that,Nabanita Das, who is a nurse by profession, left her job to take up farming as she was inspired by the growing of fruits and vegetables at Elengmora, where one of her  sisters is married too.

Taking the example from her sisters she started  farm at  No 2 Charigaon Chapori, a sand bank of the river Brahmaputra located near Borsolla Beel to her six bigha organic farm at Potia Gaon near the Brahmaputra, Nabanita’s has toiled to make the paddy field a fertile ground for growing all kinds of vegetables, flowers and now even black rice.

Nabanita’s produce is totally organic. She fends of pests with mixtures of neem and other shrubs as well as variations of Trichoderma.

In 2016, the Indian Council of Agriculture and Research (ICAR) presented her the Best Farmer Award at the Assam Agricultural University and this year on February 22, ICAR, Patna awarded her again after she was selected by the University along with 10 other progressive farmers of the region.

On Republic Day, she had been jointly feted by the Paradise Group and Small tea Growers Association .

In May 2018 she and a few other progressive farmers were taken to Vietnam by the State government for an interaction with agriculturists of that country too.