Centre not funding research: Min
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Hitting out at the Centre for not providing financial assistance to TN for research in agriculture and allied sectors, state agriculture minister S. Damodaran told the Assembly that chief minister J. Jayalalithaa had been supportive in extending funds for research, education and extension activities.
“Though the Centre has been allocating crores of rupees for research institutes in many states, it has not allocated a single paise to Tamil Nadu since the past four years.
The chief minister has allocated Rs 500 crore to the TNAU for research and extension activities,” he said while wrapping up the debate on the demand for grants for his department in the Assembly on Thursday.
He said the government would establish 28 community radio stations at a cost of Rs 14 crore through the TNAU in three years to effectively transfer local farm technologies to farmers, weather conditions, daily commodity prices, environmental protection, etc.
In addition , a model village for micro-irrigation would be created for each district to facilitate transfer of modern irrigation technology to farmers.
A Rs 50 crore horticulture farm would be set up in Srirangam. Individual agriculture insurance scheme would be introduced along with a new policy to promote eco-friendly agricultural practices.
Mr. Damodaran said a ‘farm crop management system,’ backed with IT enabled extension and strong marketing support has been developed to usher in Second Green Revolution.
This would aid planning at individual farm level and bridge yield gap.The farmers would be given advisories on agriculture operations.
The scheme would be implemented on AGRISNET platform aided by hand held Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) enabled with GPRS, GIS, GPS and pico mini projector.
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