Farming practices in 4 blocks to be surveyed

Coimbatore: The district’s agriculture technology management agency (ATMA) plans to survey four blocks—Pollachi, Karamadai, Annur and Periyanaickenpalayam, to understand the exact requirement of farmers and ensure their land and resources are optimally used.
The project to improve their livelihoods and revenue will be a five-year plan. Farmers will be advised on more suitable crops, cultivation practices, varieties and use of machines.
ATMA was launched by the Centre to achieve sustainable agriculture development. It plans to select specific areas, or a few villages, study their soil type, weather, rainfall pattern, labour availability among others and use this data to understand the gap in yield that farmers experience.
The areas selected for the study are Pollachi—which is primarily a coconut-based cropping system, Karamadai which like Thondamuthur is a vegetable cultivation belt, Annur which like Sulthanpet and S Kulam is a millet cultivation belt and Periyanaickenpalayam which is an integrated farming belt, said Tom P Silus, the deputy director in charge of central government schemes, agriculture department.
From mid-March till April-end, ATMA workers will be visiting the four villages and going door to door covering almost every farmer and getting them to fill four surveys. “The four surveys will basically assess the crops they cultivate, variety they cultivate, their water resources like tanks, bores etc., irrigation method, availability of labour, cost of labour, revenue, fertilizers being used, among others. With this, we will identify what they lack and what they need and try providing it for them, and advising them on better options like alternate crops, better varieties available or advising them to add a few milch cows etc.,” Sylus said.
ATMA consists of seven government agencies, including agriculture department, horticulture department, agriculture marketing and business department, agriculture business department, sericulture department, fisheries department and animal husbandry. “We believe that the data we get from these four villages, will be adequate for us to come up with a plan for the entire district, because all four villages have not only different cropping patterns but rainfall and water availability patterns too,” Sylus said.
ATMA conducted a two-day orientation workshop including a few model farmers and panchayat presidents from the four blocks, to draft questions for the survey at TNAU on Monday and Tuesday. “Our plan is to get at least 100 farmers from each block to participate in our survey,” Sylus said.