District Agricultural Plan
Tamil Nadu has been surging ahead steadily and strongly to become one of the most socially and economically progressive States in the country. In spite of significant economic achievement by the State, it is a fact that the pattern and nature of growth process in the State has been somewhat skewed with spatial and sectoral imbalances. In order to achieve the desired growth rate in agricultural sector it was resolved that agricultural strategies must be reoriented to meet the needs of farmers rather than increasing agricultural production alone.
Accordingly, a new Additional Central Assistance Scheme named National Agricultural Development Programme (NADP) has been introduced to incentivise the states to draw up plans for agricultural sector more effectively taking into account the agro-climatic conditions, natural resources base, the felt needs of the people and technology, besides integrating livestock, poultry and fisheries more fully.
It is also suggested that each district should prepare District Agriculture Plan that would present the vision for Agriculture and allied sectors. Such plans should also provide the overall development perspective of the district apart from financial requirement and sources of financing the agriculture development.
The Government of India also indicated that while preparing these District plans, the guidelines issued for preparing Comprehensive District Agriculture Plan (C-DAP) may also be adopted.
Based on the above guidelines, the District Agriculture Plan for 29 districts of Tamil Nadu (with the exception of Chennai and the Nilgris) is prepared.
THE APPROACH
The preparation of District Agriculture Plan involved collection of base line data, a series of sensitization workshops at village / block and district level, discussion meetings with the development department officials to identify major interventions, local initiatives and priority setting and development of action plans and proposals. The draft action plan thus prepared was presented in the District Collectors Meetings held in each district under the chairmanship of District Collector. The feed back received in the District Collectors Meeting, recommendations and relevant details based on Strategic Research Extension Plan and Agriculture Technologies Management Agencies have also been considered for preparing the District Agriculture Plan. The District Agricultural Plan has ultimately formed the basis for preparation development programmes for implementation under NADP.
DEVELOPMENT ISSUES
In what follows, the various development issues and approaches to tackle them in different sectors identified are detailed.
Agriculture
- Current fallows, cultivable waste and uncultivable lands and area under problem soils are found in all the districts. There is a predominance of farmers with marginal and small holdings. Based on these ground realities, following approaches to the development issues are identified.
- Minimizing area under fallows
- Bringing cultivable waste areas under some field crops or tree crops
- Developing the capacity of small farmers to undertake cultivation of economically viable crops and allied sector enterprises
- Development and reclamation of sandy, less productive and problem
Soils
- The fertility status of soils in general is poor in most of the districts. Monitoring the change in fertility status of the soils is an important issue for consideration for promotion of soil test based nutrient management.
- Integrated farming system with the inclusion of dairy / small ruminants / fishery / poultry components with crop husbandry
- Diversification of cropping systems by including cash crops, horticultural crops like fruits, vegetables and flower crops along with food grains to ensure food and nutritional security.
- Stress on Organic farming system involving recycling of farm wastes, use of green and green leaf manure, vermicompost use of bio-inputs including and adoption of biocontrol measures in plant protection
- Stress on alternate land use system with agroforestry, biofuel crops, forage crops and medicinal plants.
- Capacity building of all the stake holders in Agriculture and allied sectors
- Emphasis on value addition of agricultural and horticultural crops
- Weather based farm advisory services and
- Promoting crop insurance including weather based crop insurance products.
Horticulture
- Increasing the area and productivity of Horticultural crops
- Covering the reclaimed wastelands with drought tolerant fruit trees
- Making available good quality planting material.
- Precision farming and
- Post harvest management to reduce losses, particularly, of perishables
Agricultural Engineering
- Incentivising mechanization to overcome acute labour shortage
- Water conservation, micro-irrigation and fertigation techniques to overcome scarcity of irrigation water for crop husbandry and to optimize use of nutrients and
- Pooling of available machinery for use by small and marginal farmers through custom hiring
Animal Husbandry
- Acute shortage of Feed and Fodder, particularly in the context of declining area under pastures
- Outbreak of diseases in cattle and small ruminants
- Lack of knowledge on value addition of milk and other dairy products
- Inadequate milk procurement and distribution system
- Lack of knowledge on the scientific rearing of calves and magnetic milk production.
Fishery
- Diversification of fishing methods
- Lack of knowledge of modern fish culture techniques
- Restoration of mangroves and
- Research and developments for value addition with low cost techniques
Agricultural Marketing
- Improving infrastructure facilities for marketing including storage and transportation and
- Market intelligence system and
- Empowering farmer by organizing grower association
INTERVENTIONS
To address the above issues, the following interventions have been proposed in the District Agriculture Plans.
Agriculture
- Integrated Rice Productivity Improvement Programme
- Integrated Soil Health Management
- Integrated Pest Management including bio control measures in plant protection
- Distribution of Hybrid seed, micronutrient mixture, green manure seeds and bio-fertilizers
- Establishment of Agri-clinic cum – Mini soil testing labs
- Enriched FYM preparation and demonstration
- Establishment of model farms to demonstrate latest cultivation techniques
- Strengthening of State Seed Farms
- Enhancing the production and productivity of the crops
- Promotion of SRI – Distribution of Marker, transplanter and Cono weeder
- Scaling up and transforming extension activities to share real time information
- DAP spray for pulses
- Exposure visit to farmers and officials to precision farming sites and
- Integrated Farming system
Horticulture
- Provision of net house structure for protected cultivation
- Community Nursery for Vegetable Production
- Package for plant protection
- Bore well with casing pipe
- Support system for banana, betelvine, etc.
- Interstate exposure visit for farmers and officials
- 10 hec mega demo plot at district level and
- Organizing District level farmers workshop
Agricultural Marketing and Agribusiness
- Establishment of commodity groups for marketing
- Facilitation of contract farming
- Generation and dissemination of market intelligence
- Strengthening of market extension centres
- Organizing exposure visits to important markets and processing industries within the State and outside the State
- Arrangement of buyers / sellers meet and
- Training farmers and market intermediaries on post harvest handling of produce, food safety and traceability
Agricultural Engineering
- Popularization of Agricultural machinery
- Soil Conservation works
- Water management / conservation works
- Control of sea water intrusion and
- Promoting the concept of mechanized village
Animal Husbandry and Fisheries
- Feed and fodder development
- Improvement of livestock health
- Genetic upgradation
- Strengthening of veterinary institutions
- Disaster management
- Capacity building of farmers
- Processing facilities for value addition
- Supply of fish seeds, fishing implements etc.,
- Infrastructure development and
- Skill development for technical staff
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