CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu continued its winning streak of bagging the Krishi Karman Award from the Centre for the highest production of food grains which include paddy, pulses and millets, for the year 2015-16. TN farmers were felicitated during the inaugural function of Krishi Unnati Mela on Saturday at the Indian Institute of Agricultural Research (IARI), Pusa Campus, New Delhi.
A press release from the secretariat here said the state launched food grain mission during 2012-13 to bring in a paradigm shift from food security to food surplus through a mission mode approach to bridge the yield gap. For this, the state introduced a bundle of frontier technologies with extensive extension support, besides policy initiatives, to achieve a quantum jump in food grain production, the release said.
Due to efforts the food grain production which had been 75.95 Lakh MT in 2010-11 has touched an all time high of 101.52 Lakh MT in 2011-12 and state bagged the krishi Karman award in 2011-12. And in 2013-14, the state bagged the award for production of coarse cereals, the release said.
On behalf of the TN CM, minister R. Doraikkannu recieved the award along with agriculture department secretary Gagandeep Singh Bedi. The award consists of trophy, citation and cash amount of Rs.5 crore. Further, two progressive farmers R. Rasathi of Ariyalur and S. Samynathan of Tirunelveli from Tamil Nadu were conferred with cash award of Rs.2 lakh each for their best performance in obtaining paddy yield of 9563 Kg per Hectare and pulses (blackgram) yield of 1700 Kg per hectare, respectively in 2015-16, the release added.
During the 2017 drought insurance compensation to the tune of more than Rs.3,113 crore had been sanctioned for 10.15 lakh affected farmers in the state and Tamil Nadu also stands first among all other states in disbursement of claims to Rabi farmers under Crop Insurance scheme, TN official sources said.
