Chennai, March 02: The entire farming community is expected to benefit from mobile-based agro-advisory services if the proposal to the Tamil Nadu Government by Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) to provide free mobile phones to the 81 lakh farm families in the State is accepted, according to Vice-Chancellor of TNAU P. Murugesa Boopathi.
At a six-day training on “Development of Participatory Irrigated Cropping Systems” held at the university, he said if free mobile phones were given, then the SMS that was being sent to 25,000 farmers and extension officials on a daily basis on the wholesale and retail price of agricultural produce would receive an impetus.
“The university is involved in providing market price information for various perishables such as fruits, vegetables, flowers, and plantation crops, besides others, through SMS. The agri-portal (http://agritech.tnau.ac.in) is a treasure house for knowledge and services for farmers, extension workers and others,” the Vice-Chancellor said.
Regarding the Sustainable Sugarcane Initiative (SSI) of the university, he said that if farmers of the country adopted this technology, it would become the first in the world in sugar production.
“TNAU is also intensively promoting Rajarajan 1000 under the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) as it gives increased yields and helps to conserve 40 per cent of water. Due to SRI, the average rice yield has gone up from three to four tonnes a hectare to six tonnes a hectare in the State,” Mr. Boopathi said.
Former World Bank expert M. Balasubramanian said that the productivity per unit of water should be kept as the goal and not productivity per unit of land.
This was feasible only if farmers were involved in planning appropriate cropping systems that were best suited to the prevailing irrigation systems in their area.
He urged the agriculture officers to become conversant in planning the head reach, mid-reach and tail reach of the irrigation systems, since each reach was endowed with different levels of resources.
“Dovetailing of the existing government development programmes with the proposed cropping system plans should also be aimed at for greater synergy” Mr. Balasubramanian said.
–Agencies–