Place: Krishnagiri

Bumper harvest

• Krishnagiri: S. Mallika, 27, is expecting a windfall this year. The farmer from Kurumpatti village in Tamil Nadu’s Krishnagiri district owns a 5 acre tract, which has been yielding an annual income of Rs50,000 for her family until now. This year, Mallika is confident her earning would be six times more Rs3 lakh and that too from just 1,000 sq. m. Ask her how, and she credits it to the National Horticulture Mission (NHM), a Central government scheme to to help farmers use advanced horticultural techniques to boost their yields. “My father told me about this,” said Mallika. “The country is progressing. Even daily wage labourers use cellphones these days.I thought why should we stay behind?”
• Under the scheme, the government offers subsidies and other assistance to farmers to set up small nurseries and gardens, where they can grow fruits, vegetables, spices, flowers, aromatic plants and other crops in controlled environments. One of its initiatives is providing a 50% subsidy to farmers to take up polyhouse farming. Farmers construct a metal structure covered with sheets of polythene, which allows them to control temperature and the moisture inside and enables higher yields throughout the year.
• Mallika constructed her greenhouse, or polyhouse, at a cost of Rs6.5 lakh, half of which came as a government subsidy and the other half as a loan for a seven-year period. With her extra income, she hopes to build another polyhouse soon.
  As more and more farmers such as Mallika show a willingness to adopt modern techniques, nearly 2,500ha have been brought under the NHM in Krishnagiri this fiscal year at a cost of Rs5.26 crore. Even though this is just about half the targeted 4,831ha for the year, it has made Krishnagiri the most successful NHM district in Tamil Nadu. State agricultural officials said they would cover the rest of the area before the end of March.
  sources.
• Besides the subsidy, farmers can avail both pre- and post-harvesting assistance through nationalized banks and financial institutions such as National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, Small Industries Development Bank of India and IDBI Bank Ltd.Of the Rs1,100 crore earmarked for the scheme in 2009-10, Tamil Nadu’s share is Rs96 crore. The Centre will contribute 85% of the outlay, while the states will contribute the rest.
• Two state horticultural farms in Krishnagiri offer technical know-how to farmers and provide them good quality seedlings. In addition, the regional research station of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, at Paiyur, trains farmers in modern methods of crop propagation.
• The campus houses a model nursery of 4ha, set up through NHM subsidy, for selling seeds to farmers at reasonable rates. NHM also offers subsidies to individuals who set up such nurseries and sell seedlings to other farmers at rates determined by the government.