Krushi Yantrapati Mela-2023 : Farm Machinery is an important intervention to make agriculture more timebound, reduce drudgery and reduce cost of cultivation. Agricultural mechanization is one of the major interventions to increase agricultural productivity, food grain production, timely farming and depleting natural resources and farm investment.
The financial assistance in shape of subsidy is being provided to popularize Farm Mechanization in the state. State government is providing subsidy and credit facilities to the farmers for the supply of improved agricultural machinery and equipment, said Sri Ranendra Pratap Swain, Minister, Agriculture and FE, Fisheries and ARD.
Addressing on the occasion of Farm Machineries Manufacturers Meet for “Krushi Yantrapati Mela-2023” held at Krushi Bhawan Minister Sri Swain said that the state government has provisioned a 40 to 60% subsidy for various approved agricultural machineries /equipment/ implements for the farmers and 75 %subsidy for women self-help groups.
The subsidy is being provided to the farmers under the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme. SAFAL App (Simplified Application for Agricultural Loans) has been launched since 2022-23 to make this process easy. Through this portal, the farmers can apply for agricultural loans from banks and various lending institutions and purchase the machinery.In the last four years from 2019-20 to 2022-23, 1,70,296 pieces of agricultural machinery/equipment have been given to the farmers of Odisha with subsidy amount of Rs.1005.83crores. Sri Swain put emphasis on popularisation of small equipment, especially women-friendly equipment.
Major machinery such as tractors, power tillers, combine harvesters, reapers, rotavators, rice transplanters, multi-grain axial flow threshers, power weeder and mini rice mills, rubber roll sheller, mini oil mill, Rice Puffing Machine, Rice flattening Machine, pulverisers etc have been supplied to the farmers.
For the FY-2023-24 the target for supply of Farm Machineries is 70,000 nos with a subsidy provision for 450 crore. Till 05.09.2023 subsidy amount of Rs.153crores has been disbursed towards supply of 24953 no of farm machineries to the farmers.Due to continuous efforts in farm mechanization, the farm power input of Odisha has increased from a low of 0.62 kilowatts per hectare in 2000-01 to 2.32 kilowatts per hectare in 2022-23.
Last year, district-level mela on farm machinery were organized in all 30 districts to facilitate the sale showcase of new technologically advanced machineries to the farmers of the state. Basing on the success and response of the previous year mela, current year the state government has extended the farm machinery mela up to the sub-division level, which are going to be organized between October to December 2023. Sri Swain sincerely hopes that with active participation of manufacturers in these melas with sufficient inventory at reasonable price for sale during this mela will benefit the farmers at large.
Sri Premachandra Choudhary, Director, Agriculture and Food Production, Chief Engineer of Agriculture and Farmer’s Welfare Department and other senior officers and large number of Farm Machine Manufacturers and dealers attended the meeting.
