Agriculture
Agriculture continues to be the most predominant sector of the State economy, as 70 percent of the population is engaged in Agriculture and allied activities for their livelihood. The State has as an area of 1.3 Lakh sq.km with a gross cropped area of around 63 L.Ha.. The main objective is to ensure stability in agricultural production and to increase the agricultural productivity in a sustainable manner to meet the food requirement of growing population in the country.
Tamil Nadu has all along been one of the states with a creditable performance in agricultural production and the farmers relatively more responsive and receptive to changing technologies and market forces.
To strengthen the state agricultural policies, the TNBRD is implementing various development activities in agriculture and allied departments through ICAR sponsored Krishi Vigyan Kendra’s located at Thiruvannamalai and Krishnagiri districts of the state. The major activities taken up by the kendras are listed below.
- Planning and conducting survey of the operational area in order to prepare the resource inventory with special reference to identifying the training needs of the farming community.
- Planning and Conducting Short term research trials to identify the location specificity of agricultural technologies under various farming systems.
- Planning and Organizing Front Line Demonstrations (FLD) to establish production potential of various crops and enterprises on the farmers’ fields.
- Organizing need based training of farmers to update their knowledge and skills in modern agricultural technologies related to technology assessment, refinement and demonstration and training of extension personnel to orient them in the frontier areas of technology development.
- Creating awareness about improved technologies to larger masses through appropriate extension programmes.
- Production and supply of good quality seeds and planting materials, livestock, poultry and fisheries breeds and products and various bio-products to the farming community.
- Work as resource and knowledge centre of agricultural technology for supporting initiatives of public, private and voluntary sector for improving the agricultural economy of the district.
- Organizing farm science clubs in rural villages in order to induce younger generation into modern agriculture and allied fi elds through scientific.
- Developing and maintaining the campus farms and demonstration units on scientific lines as the facilities for providing work experience to the trainees as also disseminating the latest technical know how.
- Imparting some general education to rural illiterates and school drop-outs in order to make them not only good farmers but al so better citizens.
- Providing added training facilities in the areas for home making and nutrition education for rural community.