The Agriculture Department has taken up a survey to create a database on small and marginal farmers in the district and to identify the requirements for doubling their productivity and income over the next three years.
The survey would come up with a comprehensive database of the small and marginal farmers to include information on their land holdings, ownership/tenancy rights, cropping pattern and their average productivity and income over the past three years. The fertility status of the farmers' fields or the village would also be recorded.
More importantly, the survey would assess the requirements of the farmers in terms of credit flow, agricultural inputs and implements. It would also assess the constraints faced by farmers in increasing productivity and come up with suitable remedial measures, sources in the Agriculture Department said.
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The survey is being done in line with the State government's stated objective of putting in place measures to double agricultural productivity.
Once the survey is completed, the database would be uploaded to a State-wide network enabled with GPS (Global Positioning System) and GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) facilities. The data would be uploaded through hand-held PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) to be supplied to the field officers of the department. Each farmer, block and district would be given exclusive code numbers so that the entire information of a particular farmer or area could be accessed immediately once the database was ready.
A team of 86 assistant agricultural officers, 16 agricultural officers, 12 deputy agricultural officers and nine assistant directors of agriculture are engaged in conducting the survey across the district. The exercise was being supervised by J.Sekar, Joint Director of Agriculture, R.Chandrasekaran, Deputy Director (Central schemes) and S.Saba Natesan, Deputy Director (State Schemes).
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After the project was completed, by the month end, appropriate interventional measures are expected to be implemented by the State government.
One third of the identified farmers would be covered every year over the three-year period. The Department would come up with suitable recommendations right from the sowing to harvest stage for every farmer.
It would suggest appropriate cropping pattern, steps to increase the crop intensity, use of micro irrigation systems and modern farm implements.
It would identify the requirement of machines such as tractors, transplanters, weeders and combined harvesters so that measures could be taken to make them accessible to farmers through rental services run by self-help groups, primary agricultural cooperative societies or agri clinics.