TN announces overseas training programme for 150 farmers

CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu Agriculture Minister M.R.K. Panneerselvam, in his agriculture budget for the financial year 2023-23 on Tuesday, proposed that 150 farmers from the state would be provided overseas training in new farming techniques.

He said that the farmers would be taken to countries where modern methods of farming are deployed including in Israel, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Egypt, Malaysia, and Thailand.

The minister, while presenting the budget, said that deploying high yield technologies have led to high productivity in certain countries and farmers of Tamil Nadu would be eager to adopt these technologies in their fields if they are provided an opportunity to visit these countries and see for themselves the improvement in farming there.

"Seeing is believing and doing is learning", he said, announcing Rs 3 crore from the Union government and state government funds for the expenses of taking farmers overseas.

Panneerselvam also announced a project to create a gene bank of traditional vegetable seeds to popularise them and an amount of Rs 1.5 crore was sanctioned for the project. He said that the district level seed festivals would be conducted and state level seminars would also be held.

He said that the farmers who have preserved maximum traditional vegetable seeds will be given awards and added that these traditional seeds would be multiplied at the state horticultural farms and distributed to farmers and public.