KVK, Wyra - Skill Training Program on “Value Added Food Products for Income Generation” From 08-03-2022 to 10-03-2022

The rural farm women are marginal or small farmers, landless tenants and farm labourer. They have scanty land to cultivate with less knowledge, limited access to innovative technologies, low capital and less credit facilities. Studies have shown that women farmers play a pivotal role in agricultural development in a country, they are comparatively less informative than male farmers due to certain socio-economic and cultural constraints. They need more accurate, reliable and quick information along with male farmers for agricultural development as a whole. Rural women received most of the agricultural information from interpersonal and mass media sources than from trained personnel. The adoption of skill trainings in rural areas is affected by factors like farming situation, resource availability, needs and aspirations of the rural women with different socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. Further, inadequate skill training services, high illiteracy among rural women, socio-cultural background, low paying-capacity and lack of interest may be the barriers for non-adoption or low adoption of different improved homestead technologies. In this context, to provide options and at the same income generation to farm women, a three days skill-oriented training program on “Value added Food products for Income Generation” from 08.03.2022 to 10.03.2022 was organised. The training included on aspects related to preparation of value-added products using mushrooms as they are rich, low-calorie source of fiber, protein, and antioxidants. They are also great sources of minor mineral selenium which is a powerful antioxidant. They also mitigate the risk of developing serious health conditions like Alzheimer's, heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Millets are climate-resilient crops adapting to wide range of ecological conditions requiring less irrigation with better growth and productivity in low nutrient input conditions depending minimal on artificial fertilizers and vulnerability to environmental stresses. There is need to revive the importance of millet groups as health foods to enhance food and nutritional security. Millets contain high amounts of proteins, fibre, B-complex vitamins including niacin, thiamine and riboflavin, essential sulphur-containing amino acids like methionine, lecithin and little of vitamin E. They are rich in minerals like iron, magnesium, calcium and potassium also. Millets due to their nutritive value have potential health benefits to prevent cancers, decrease the occurrence of cardiovascular diseases, reduce tumor proliferation, lower blood pressure, risk of heart diseases, cholesterol content, rate of fat absorption, delayed gastric emptying and increased gastrointestinal bulk. Value-addition to millet grains as ready-to-eat and ready-to-cook items offers good opportunity to farmers for enhanced income generation, promotes production and marketing leading to nutritional security, employment and revenue generation. Hence, the participants were trained on preparation of millet based valued products like foxtail millet payasam, beetroot incorporated ragi laddu, bajra laddu and jowar incorporated pakodi as ragi is rich in calcium, beetroot in iron foxtail millet for its β carotene. These are low-cost foods with immense health benefits. Jaggery was added to sweet items as it is a known source of iron in the diets. These simple and easy to prepare work can help these women to gain confidence in doing them at their house hold level and at the same time take up as an income generating activity.