Bhubaneswar: The State government has provisioned 40 to 60 per cent (pc) subsidy for various approved agricultural machineries and equipment for the farmers and 75 pc subsidy for women self-help groups, informed Agriculture and Farmers’ Empowerment Minister Ranendra Pratap Swain while addressing the Farm Machineries Manufacturers Meet for ‘Krushi Yantrapati Mela-2023’ held at Krushi Bhawan here on Thursday.
The subsidy is being provided to the farmers under 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, 1,70,296 pieces of agricultural machinery/equipment have been given to farmers of Odisha with subsidy amount of Rs.1005.83 crore. He put emphasis on popularization of small equipment, especially women-friendly equipment.
The fair will be organized between October and December. This year, the government has extended the farm machinery mela up to sub-division level.
Farm Machinery is an important intervention to make agriculture more time bound, 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.
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.153 crores 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.
Among others, Agriculture and Food Production Director Prema Chandra Choudhary, Agriculture Department Chief Engineer and other senior officers and large number of Farm Machine Manufacturers and dealers attended the meeting.
