The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Agriculture Ministry plans farm mechanisation

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Monday, Feb 25, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Agriculture Ministry plans farm mechanisation

Staff Reporter

It aims to help medium, small farmers reduce production costs

THENI: The Agriculture Ministry has plans for a massive farm mechanisation to overcome shortage of labour and help medium and small farmers reduce production costs.

To begin with, harvesting and planting of certain selective crops would be mechanised, according to Veerapandi S. Arumugam, Minister for Agriculture.

He was laying the foundation stone for a cold storage facility-cum-ripening chamber for banana at Chinnamanur, one of the major banana producing centres in the district, near here on Sunday.

The Agriculture Engineering department would purchase modern machineries for harvesting paddy, small grains and sugarcane. To begin with, 50 tractors and 25 harvesting machines at a cost of Rs.6.21 crore would be purchased. These machineries would be hired to farmers at reasonable charges. Such effort would not only reduce production costs and save time also. Mechanisation would minimise post harvest loss also.

Most advanced 200 machineries suitable to the needs of farmers would also be procured under World Bank-assisted Irrigated Agriculture Modernisation and Water Bodies Restoration and Management (IAMWARM) scheme. Machinery for paddy planting and sugarcane harvesting would be purchased, he said.

“We had already held discussions with experts in China and Japan for farm machineries.

They had agreed to visit our farms to know our method of planting and harvesting to design machineries suitable to our needs. While Chinese experts would design sugarcane harvesting machine, Japan would design planting machinery for paddy,” he said.

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