Under ‘‘Per Drop More Crop” component of Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY-PDMC), the Central government has allocated ₹4,000 crore as annual allotment to states for the current financial year. The Agricultural Ministry, in their statement, said the beneficiaries are identified by the state governments, and the release of funds to some state governments is already under process for the year 2020-2021.
“Per Drop More Crop” component of PMKSY-PDMC is under implementation by the Department of Agriculture Cooperation and Farmers’ Welfare. This focuses on improving water efficiency at the farm level through micro irrigation technologies such as “drip and sprinkler” irrigation.
This technology helps to reduce the usage of fertilizers along with the reduction in usage of water. Micro irrigation Fund corpus of ₹5000 crore has been created with National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD).
So far micro irrigation fund has been released to Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. The area covered under this project, in Andhra Pradesh is 1.021 lakh hector, and the fund released is 616.14 crore. In Tamil Nadu, the area under this project is, 1.76 lakh hector and the fund released is 478.79 crore through NABARD.
The purpose of this fund is to spread the micro irrigation technique in states by taking up new and innovative projects for the development of Agriculture. This is also to encourage the farmers to install micro irrigation systems. In the years 2015-16 to 2019-20, an area of 46.96 lakh hectors has been covered under this project.