Tamil Nadu Agriculture minister MRK Panneerselvam on Tuesday, March 21, presented the state's agriculture budget in which Rs 450 crore allocation was made for micro irrigation. In his speech in the Legislative Assembly, the minister said that mirco irrigation was the most important factor for the improvement of agriculture in the state and hence such a huge allocation was made for it.
The agriculture minister has allocated Rs 26 crore for organic farming, 20 crore for coconut farming, Rs 14 crore for alternative farming, Rs 19 crore for the availability of tomatoes throughout the year and a sum of Rs 29 crore to ensure the availability of onions throughout the year.
The minister said that an amount of Rs 14 crore was allocated for alternative farming and Rs 50 crore for providing interest-free loans to improve animal husbandry.
The budget also said that an amount of Rs 12 crore was allocated for continuing the Sustainable Cotton Cultivation Mission. An amount of Rs 2,337 crore was allocated as the state government's share of premium subsidy for crop insurance.
The agriculture minister said that the state government would allocate Rs 253 crore to provide special incentive of Rs 195 over and above the Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP) of Rs 2,821 per Metric Tonne of cane announced by the Union Government.
For the basic details of the farmers like bank account, Aadhaar Number of land owners and cultivators, land details and crop cultivation details will be collected and digitised through a new portal GRAINS (Grower Online Registration of Agriculture Input system). This is proposed to be a 'One Stop Solution' for farmers.
The minister also proposed that 150 farmers from the state would be provided overseas training in new farming techniques. He said that the farmers would be taken to countries where modern methods of farming are deployed including in Israel, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Egypt, Malaysia, and Thailand.
The minister, while presenting the budget, said that deploying high yield technologies have led to high productivity in certain countries and farmers of Tamil Nadu would be eager to adopt these technologies in their fields if they are provided an opportunity to visit these countries and see for themselves the improvement in farming there.
Panneerselvam also announced a project to create a gene bank of traditional vegetable seeds to popularise them and an amount of Rs 1.5 crore was sanctioned for the project. He said that the district level seed festivals would be conducted and state level seminars would also be held.
He said that the farmers who have preserved maximum traditional vegetable seeds will be given awards and added that these traditional seeds would be multiplied at the state horticultural farms and distributed to farmers and the public.