Government has sanctioned Rs. 2.65 crore to 53 Farmers Producers Groups (FPG) for an innovative programme to help farmers to enhance their farm productivity and income, in the district during the year 2018-19.
The programmed will seek to give a fillip to collective farming. It will be addressing buyers and sellers meet and will be organized by the Agriculture department to help farmers in Farmers Interest Groups (FIG). So that farmers can directly meet manufacturers of agriculture machinery.
Representatives of ten companies were present in the meet. Among others, there were S. S. Shaiek Abdullah, personal assistant to Collector (agriculture), R. R. Suseela, Joint Director, Agriculture, K. Vasubabu, Deputy Director, Central Schemes, S. Mathiazhagan, District Development Manager, NABARD and U. Ambathkumar, agriculture officer.
Veera Raghava Rao, Collector said, “Collective farming has been launched to integrate small and marginal farmers and help them enhance their farm income.”
He further added, “Under the programme, the department of agriculture and horticulture helps the farmers to form FIGs, integrating 20 farmers in each group and FPGs integrating five FIGs in each group. The government has provided corpus of Rs. 5 lakh each to the FPGs to help the farmers to buy agriculture inputs and machineries.”
In the year 2017-18, the departments had formed 495 FIGs and 99 FPGs and helped them purchase 660 various agriculture inputs and machineries like, tractors, rotavators, power tillers, power weeders, seed drills and sprayers at the total cost of Rs. 3.02 crore. The groups had also earned Rs. 30.22 lakh by letting the machineries on lease. FPGs were also helped to purchase agriculture inputs for Rs. 40.53 lakh by ‘collective purchase’ and hence saved 10 to 15%, he said.
This year also, the 53 FPGs would be helped to purchase implements and machineries and farm inputs. The meet was organised to help farmers to meet the manufacturers directly and negotiate on the prices, he said. After presenting the project implementing plan and obtaining approvals from him and department officials, the groups could place intends.
Adding to it, steps were also taken to help the FPGs to secure subsidised loans from the District Industrial Centre for buying machineries, the Collector said.
