12 hours ago
Govt keen on promoting farm mechanisation
Nellore: Scarcity agriculture labourers when the farm operations are picking up is giving impetus to farm mechanisation in the district.
Shortage of labourers, apparently due to majority of them taking up works under National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) is forcing more farmers to adopt farm machinery.
According to sources, around five lakh farmers in the district have taken up paddy cultivation in about five lakh acres during the monsoon season.
Famers observe that thousands of labourers migrated to other States as house construction workers, coupled with introduction of NREGS, lack of laborers has become a huge problem as majority of them are preferring to take up works under the job scheme than working in the fields.
To overcome this problem, the State government is proposed to sanction nine varieties of instruments like rotators, cultivators, mould board ploughs, seed-cum-fertiliser drills mini tractors, inter cultivators, plant protectors etc.
These instruments would be provided under cultivation budget, Rastriya Vikas Yojana, at 70 percent subsidy. Apart from this, 50 percent subsidy would be provided by the Central government while 20 per cent will be provided by the State government.
As part of this initiative, district Collector O Anand has distributed 142 types of various farm instruments worth Rs 6.8 crore under farm mechanisation scheme at a programme at Acharya NG Ranga Agriculture University and Agriculture Research Station (ARS) in Muthukuru Road in the city on Thursday.
Speaking on the occasion, Collector Anand has said the aim of the government in encouraging farm mechanisation is to ease the farmers from the burden of labour and securing better profits with less investments.
District Agriculture Officer P Satyavani has said under these schemes farmers should farm groups to purchase heavy instruments like paddy translators, harvesters, power weeders, brush cutters etc as the government is keen on providing farm instruments at very low cost offering subsidies in a big way.
