The Centre has provided 15.23 lakh agricultural machinery and equipment to farmers under the Centrally-sponsored scheme “Sub-Mission on Agricultural Mechanisation” (SMAM), according to Narendra Singh Tomar, Union Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Minister.

Replying to a query in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, he said SMAM is being implemented through state governments since 2014-15 for promoting agricultural mechanisation in the country.

Under the scheme, 15,23,650 agricultural machinery and equipment have been provided to the farmers. These include tractors, power tillers, combine harvesters, self-propelled machineries, tractor/power tiller driven equipment, agricultural drones and plant protection equipments, etc.

He said 43,954 custom hiring centres/hi-tech hubs/farm machinery banks have been established.

Stating that agricultural mechanisation and crop productivity have a direct correlation, he said agricultural mechanisation saves time and labour, increases utilisation efficiencies of various costly inputs, reduces drudgery, reduces post-harvest losses, and boosts crop output and farm income.

“It has been found that agricultural mechanisation in India leads to saving in seed (15-20 per cent), saving in fertilizer (15-20 per cent), saving in time (20-30 per cent), reduction in weed (20-40 per cent), reduction in labour (20-30 per cent), improvement in germination rate (7-25 per cent), increase in cropping intensity (5-20 per cent), and increase in crop yield (13-23 per cent),” he said.

Tenant farmers

Answering a separate query on the number of tenant farmers in the country, Tomar said tenant holdings constituted (with both wholly and partly leased-in area) around 17.3 per cent of the total holdings in the country during 2018-19.

He quoted the 2019 survey on ‘Situation Assessment of Agricultural Households and Land and Livestock Holdings of Households in Rural India’ by National Statistical Office for this. According to the survey, percentage of tenant holding was the maximum in Andhra Pradesh at 42.4 per cent, followed by Odisha at 39 per cent, and West Bengal at 29.5 per cent.

Crop insurance claims

Replying to another separate question on the crop insurance claims settled by the insurance companies, the Minister said the admissible claims under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) are generally paid by the insurance companies concerned within two months of completion of crop cutting experiments (CCEs) / harvesting period and one month of notification for invoking the risks / perils of prevented sowing, mid-season adversity and post-harvest losses subject to receipt of total share of premium subsidy from the Government concerned within time.

However, settlement of a few claims in some States got delayed due to reasons like delayed transmission of yield data; late release of their share in premium subsidy; yield related disputes between insurance companies and states; non-receipt of account details of some farmers for transfer of claims to the bank account of eligible farmers, and National Electronic Fund Transfer related issues; erroneous / incomplete entry of individual farmers data on National Crop Insurance Portal; delay in remittance of farmers share of premium / nonremittance of farmers share of premium to concerned insurance company, etc.

Cumulative pending claims were at ₹27,61.10 crore till 2021-22 under PMFBY. Of this, nearly 50.24 per cent was from Rajasthan (₹1387.34 crore).

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