Chennai: The Tamil Nadu government on Saturday unveiled an ambitious cooperative farming scheme and allocated Rs 100 crore for this year.
The project aims at helping small and tiny farmers with easy credit and farm inputs. The project will help TN farmers who have been hit by back-to-back drought also promises marketing skills for the farmers.
According to the project, small farmers will be grouped as farmers integrated groups (FIG). Five FIGs would be further developed into a farmer producer group. Such FPGs would be encouraged to adapt mixed farming and add value to the supply chain of agricultural produce through micro enterprises.
The concept of collective farming is to identify small and marginal farmers across the state. A corpus fund of Rs 5 lakh will be provided to each farmers' producers group and totally 2,000 FPGs would be provided support from state funds.
State agriculture secretary Gagandeep Singh Bedi passed orders on Thursday and instructed the field directors to speed up the cooperative farming project, a press release from secretariat said.
