Thiruvananthapuram: The seventh national workshop on the comprehensive scheme for studying the cost of cultivation of principal crops in India will be held from September 13 to 15 at the Institute of Management in Government (IMG), here.

VS Sunil Kumar, the Kerala Minister for Agriculture, will inaugurate the programme. The central Directorate of Economics and Statistics (DES) and the Economics department of the University of Kerala will jointly conduct the event.

The three-day workshop will cover topics on concepts and technical issues in the field. Besides, there will be presentation by the DES on unit-level data analytics of 2017-18 agriculture year and another presentation by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) on new aspects of FARMAP 2.0 software. There will also be an open discussion on data-entry issues pertaining to the FARMAP (Farm Analysis Package) software, and presentation by DES regarding administrative issues.

The DES collects, disseminates and publishes statistics on diverse facets of agriculture and related sectors required for policy formulation by the governments.

The different technical sessions at the workshop will be held by Nidhi Satija, deputy director (cost studies), Joginder, assistant director (CS), Dr.VandanaKhullar, NIC, among others. The organising committee for the workshop includes secretary Prof Abdul Salim A, the Head of the Economics department and director Cost of Cultivation Scheme at the University of Kerala; general convenor Indulekha PT, who is the field officer of the Scheme at the University of Kerala; and conveners Dr Rohini S Nair, Ashar M, V K Santhoshkumar, Hakkim I, and Jeyan J.

The valedictory session will be held on September 15 at 3.45 pm.