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Project Ananta

Project Ananta was launched with the aim to take all available measures to overcome the drought condition in the district of Anantapur, which is located in the rain-shadow region. This new project has a hope of uplifting the farmers of Anantapur district. Anantapur was the second-lowest rainfall district in the Country. The ICAR committee studied all the issues of the agricultural sectors and made an assessment of all the natural resources, crops and other livelihood opportunities in the district with a scientific approach.

The project fund is Rs.7676 crores out of which Rs.3550.078 crores are from various departmental resources and subsidy. Overall 14 villages from 14 Assembly segments have been selected for the project initially which will be later extended to all the villages.

Objectives of Project Ananta

• The primary aim of the project is to increase agricultural production and improve the living condition of the rural and rainfed areas.
• Improving the minor irrigation system.
• Improving the rainwater harvest system, which helps in providing additional irrigation supplements for critical crop growth during the dry seasons of the country.
• The border strip system in Anantapur district is used for moisture conservation and increasing the yield by 28% over conventional flat cultivation.

Features and Activities Performed

• Conservation of soil and water resources for the betterment of agriculture.
• Using micronutrients for making the soil ready for growing crops.
• Productivity enhancement for growing crops and the usage of improved cultivars.
• Afforestation
• Income-generation of farmers.
• Farmers make avenue plantation, nursery with forest plants, forest tree spices growing in project villages and field areas.

Ways to generate Income for Marginal Farmers

• Many small scale income-generating processes can be made through nurseries, vermicomposting, home gardening, etc.
• Vermicomposting activities can generate an income of Rs.12,000 per month.
• The promotion of vegetable cultivation in small area fields will help in improving nutrition with balanced food consumption of the people in the district.

Women Empowerment

• Women-farmers have started to contribute to the betterment of agricultural activities. If young women can gain technical knowledge, a variety of agricultural activities can be performed.
• This will reduce the cost of agricultural investment and improve the quality of crops
• Women-centred activities such as Nutri-kitchen, nurseries, and gardens on small pieces of land are carried out by women farmers.
• Women farmers are trained for agricultural practices to develop their farming areas in the backyard.
• This backyard farming includes crops such as tomato, brinjal, cluster bean, okra, bitter gourd and other types of leafy vegetables.
• These practices help in both household consumption and also market purposes.

Farmers Welfare

• All the agricultural equipment are provided by the Andhra Government for the smooth agricultural mechanization.
• The group of farmers working together is provided with the necessary subsidy.
  • The application forms for the Agricultural mechanization is available in the govt website http://www.apagrisnet.gov.in/Downloads.php
• Various mobile applications are developed for farmers. These applications are updated with all the crop schemes, subsidy, crop details, land area data, etc. All the applications can be downloaded from the website http://www.apagrisnet.gov.in/mobileapp.php.
• Farmers are updated with the market prices of each crop on an everyday basis.
• Up to date weather details are available in website http://www.imdhyderabad.gov.in/apsite/andhraindex.html
• Ownership of crops and other internal crop cultivation details are provided with full details of each crop grown in particular season.

Partners of the Project

• Rural electrification corporation of Andhra Pradesh
• Government of Andhra Pradesh and line departments.
• Local NGOs are also engaged in social mobilization on-ground implementation works.
• Many community-based organizations are also involved.

Crop Production Enhancement

• Trials were conducted to evaluate the growth of crops. Soil management and soil test-based fertilizer, improved cultivars for groundnut production and pigeon pea production in moisture conservation practices
• These participatory trials resulted in improvement in production by 25% in groundnut and 27% in pigeon pea.
• Groundnut production, which is the major crop of Anantapur district has given an economic growth in 2.5 years of Rs. 32,00,000 which has benefitted 250 farmers.

Anantapur crops	Improved practice (IP)	Farmers practice (FP)	Percentage (%) of increase in IP
Groundnut	1.8	1.56	19.3
Paddy	2.8	2.56	11.7
Maize	4.36	3.85	13.0