Bhubaneswar: Odisha government has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) to provide technical training on assessing land capability and crop water budgeting across districts in the state.

Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Empowerment signed the MoU with FES here yesterday in the presence of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.

Speaking on the occasion, Chief Minister emphasised on the need for enhancing early warning system for effective management of disasters in the state. He further stressed on the need for restoring the common land and water bodies through village institutions and federations in all the districts of the state through promotion of ecologically sound agricultural practices and water management.

FES has developed a Geographic Information System (GIS) based tool CLART to assist village level functionaries to appropriately identify, plan and design structures based on recharge potentiality, land use land cover and slope.

For this, FES will act as a facilitator for promoting ecologically sound agriculture practices by providing the CLART software, training to the Village Agriculture Workers (VAW) and farmers for using the tool.

Worth mentioning, Crop Water Budgeting is another tool developed by FES to assist communities for proper management of water resources.

Revenue and Disaster Management Minister Maheswar Mohanty, Agriculture Minister Pradeep Maharathy, Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi, Principal Secretary Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Empowerment , Dr Saurabh Garg, Agriculture Production Commissioner Gagan Kumar Dhal, Managing Director Odisha State Disaster Management Authority Bishnupada Sethi, Director Agriculture and Food Production Dr M Muthukumar, Executive Director, FES Jagdeesh Rao among others were present on the occasion.