Bhubaneswar: The Principal Secretary of the Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Empowerment, Govt of Odisha, Dr Arabinda Kumar Padhee recently gave a keynote address at an international workshop in the prestigious Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.
The ‘2024 Cambridge Agri-food Supply Chain Resilience Workshop’ was organized by the ‘Institute for Manufacturing (IfM)’, University of Cambridge.
In his keynote address, Dr Padhee spoke on an evidence-based policy framework that could facilitate sustainable agriculture. Drawing examples from various regenerative agricultural practices from Odisha, Dr Padhee emphasized how climate resilience is an active need in the policy space, and not anymore a buzzword.
Participating at the ‘Cambridge India Business Dialogue’ organized by the Cambridge Judge Business School as a panellist, Dr Padhee shared his thoughts as to how India could play a major role in building a sustainable agriculture ecosystem. Both the keynote lecture and the panel interventions of Dr Padhee were very well received and recognized.
A PhD from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Dr Padhee has also earned a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of Birmingham. He has interests in agricultural transformation through sustainable intensification and is committed to make Odisha a leader in promoting nature-positive farm practices.
Earlier, Dr Padhee had participated in the COP28, the U.N. Climate Conference in Dubai last year. His rich experience and expertise are considered as a boon to the policy space for sustainable agriculture.
A post-graduate in Agricultural Science from Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Dr Padhee also has taken public policy courses at the University of Toronto, Civil Services College, Singapore and the University of Cambridge at various points in his career.
During his tenure with the Odisha Government, he was instrumental in drafting the Odisha State Agriculture Policy in 2008. He has also served as a member of the Technical Support Group of the erstwhile Planning Commission that prepared the District Agricultural Plan manual. The government of India appointed Dr Padhee as the first nodal officer to implement Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) in fertilizers in 2016.
Dr Padhee has received the Best Collector award (2003-04) and the National Award for contribution to humanitarian services given by the Indian Red Cross Society (2006-07). He was the Indian Co-chair of the Sub-Group on Fertilizers of the India-Russia Inter-governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation in October 2015. He was awarded the AIASA National Award for Outstanding Leadership in Agriculture for the year 2016.
