Fisheries and agricultural livestock remain important sources of food, nutrition, income, economic prosperity and livelihoods for people. The policy formulations for improvement of these sectors are mostly directed towards adoption of cutting edge technologies, and capacity building for sustainable development ensuring food and nutritional security, gainful employment and livelihoods, enhancement of economic prosperity and ecological health in the country.
Fisheries and Aquaculture Sector:
The unutilized and underutilized vast inland fisheries and aquaculture resources of Odisha , in the form of rivers and canals, floodplains, lakes, ponds, tanks, reservoirs and brackish water resources offer great opportunities for livelihood development and economic prosperity.
As the sector is extremely diverse and dynamic, there is a need to streamline policies and programmes, infuse public and private investments, and take R&D benefits to the farmers and fishers towards optimal resource utilization and development of the sector as an instrument of growth. It is essential to evolve an integrated and comprehensive approach of mapping and monitoring to ensure a sustainable development of inland fisheries and aquaculture that caters to the needs of our State.
Animal Resources Sector:
Livestock sector in Odisha is highly livelihood intensive and over 80 per cent of its rural households own livestock of one species or the other and earn supplementary incomes from them. The sector contributes 7.25 per cent of the state’s net domestic product and, therefore, development of the livestock sector is very significant in rural prosperity. In the wake of the changing economic policies nationally and globally, the state livestock sector policy has to take a more holistic view of the sector and find ways of catalysing rapid economic growth and development in the decades to come.
In line with above policy decisions, the present Web-GIS and Mobile Based Geo-Spatial Information System named as Fisheries and Animal Resources Mapping System (FARMS) has been developed by Odisha Space Applications Centre, Science & Technology Department, Govt. of Odisha for the Fisheries and Animal Resources Development Department . Under this system, Spatial and Attribute data relating to all kinds of fisheries and animal resources / Assets will be generated using High Resolution Satellite Data and also by Mobile App and Web-GIS technology. Besides Geocoding / Geo-tagging of all the resources, assets will be embedded to the Web-Portal. The Portal is designed to provide information on the availability of resources and allied assets in any given part of the state.