The Department of Agriculture has distributed farm machinery such as tractors and power tillers to 89 small and marginal farmers with a subsidy of Rs. 84.75 lakh under National Food Security Mission (NFSM) and National Agriculture Development Programme (NADP).
The farmers were distributed the machinery at subsidised rates as they faced hardship in preparing the lands for agricultural operations during peak season because of labour shortage, R. Gurumoorthy, Joint Director of Agriculture said.
To ensure that farmers were not discouraged from taking up cultivation and the net sown area was not affected, they were being offered support with machineries under the guidance of Collector S. Malarvizhi, he said.
They were distributed major farm machinery such as tractors, power tillers and rotavators as per the guidelines issued by the Centre under the Sub Mission on Agricultural Mechanisation (SMAM), he said.
Tractors with more than 20 horse power capacity were distributed to 43 farmers involving a total subsidy of Rs. 53.75 lakh from the National Food Security Mission (Rice), he said.
The department has distributed rotavators to 14 farmers under the pulses mission with a subsidy of Rs.7 lakh and power tillers to 32 farmers under the National Agricultural Development Programme with a subsidy of Rs.24 lakh.
S. Alagappan, Deputy Director of Agriculture, Government of India schemes, said 48 tractor-drawn seed drills would be distributed to farmers to develop plant population in direct-sown paddy areas.
As poor population of plants was seen as a setback in dry and semi-dry paddy fields, the department of agriculture has emphasised that farmers resorted to seed drill sowing method. Small, marginal and SC/ST farmers could avail the seed drills at 35 per cent subsidy rate while others at 25 per cent subsidy, he said. The farmers would also be trained to operate the machinery, he added.
Farm machinery given 89 small and marginal farmers with a total subsidy of Rs. 84.75 lakh
Source : The Hindu
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