In a remarkable move the Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Narendra Singh Tomar launched mobile apps which promise to make available latest agricultural machineries to farmers at a reasonable rate.
Farmers will now have easy access to high value and technical agricultural equipment at their doorstep, claimed Narendra Singh Tomar, Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare while launching two mobile Apps – ‘CHC Farm Machinery and Krishi Kisan App for Geo Tagging’ in New Delhi on Tuesday.
The Minister said that through CHC Farm Machinery App, farmers can select and order the required machinery at the rates feasible for them from the Custom Hiring Centers located in the radius of 50 Kms.
The Minister added that till date more than 40,000 custom hiring service centers have registered on this mobile app for renting over 1,20,000 agricultural machineries and equipment. He requested every farmer to utilize these services for betterment of their cultivation methods and thereby ensuring higher agricultural productivity.
Tomar said that the Krishi Kisan App will provide farmers the information of best demonstration of high-yielding crops and seeds in their nearby area. Any farmer with high quality of crops can utilise this platform to demonstrate best practices of cultivation to other farmers so that this will help other farmers also to adopt these methods. The App will also help in geo-tagging and geo-fencing of crop and give weather forecast message to farmers.
The Multi-lingual Mobile App CHC Farm Machinery is already available to custom service providers for registration and uploading with geo-reference photographs of agricultural machinery custom service centers and photographs of machinery available in it.
Through this app, farmers, especially small and marginal farmers, will have easy access to high value and technical agricultural equipment which will facilitate optimum use of all types of inputs using these farming machines.
This will not only increase the income of the farmers, but it will also take mechanization to maximum farm holdings in a short time frame. This app connects the farmers with Custom Hiring Service Centres in their area. The app can be downloaded on any android phone from Google Play Store.
Custom Hiring Centers, Farm Machinery banks and Hi-tech hubs have been established under the various Schemes like Sub –Mission on Agricultural Mechanization, Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana and Crop Residue Management Schemes of the DAC&FW, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers welfare to provide Agricultural Machinery on rental basis to the Farmers, especially small and marginal farmers who cannot afford to buy the high value machinery & equipment.