National Agro Foundation (NAF) is a non governmental organisation; founded in 2000 by Shri C Subramaniam, Architect of India’s Green Revolution and Bharat Ratna Awardee; for implementing grassroots projects for upgrading the quality of life of the rural community with special focus on agriculture development. Indian agriculture is facing serious problems because of shrinking cultivable land area, declining soil fertility, stagnating crop productivity levels, shortage of farm labour and farmers are abandoning agriculture in the quest of profitable venture.

Smallholder farmers are major stakeholders in Indian agriculture comprising of about 78% of country’s farmers but their landholding is only 33% of total cultivated land. In order to help the small and marginal farmers pursue agriculture and make it a profitable venture, NAF is implementing various projects in agriculture development in Tamil Nadu. Aim of this initiative is to improve the crop productivity through the use of scientific farming and improve the soil fertility

Land preparation	Integrated plant nutrient management and soil fertility improvement	Integrated pest and disease management
Irrigation management	Pre / Post Harvest techniques	Market advice/ tie up

NAF has state of the art facilities for soil testing, food safety testing, irrigation water testing, compost/manure testing etc wherein quality testing services to the farming community is provided at subsidized rates and short turn around time for farm productivity improvement.

Advisory for Soil fertility improvement is given to the farmers based on the comprehensive soil test report generated by the NAF Soil Testing Lab. The Soil Testing lab provides detailed report on the status of primary, secondary and micro-nutrients in soil and other physico-chemical parameters like pH, E.C, Organic Matter, C.E.C and Base saturation etc. Based on the test report, the farmer is given the crop specific nutrient advisory or choice of crops that can be grown in his soil. Through NAF efforts, productivity levels of various crops have been improved from 10 to 115% over a period in smallholder farms.

Small and marginal farm holders are practicing subsistence farming. Though these farmers are aware of technology adoption for productivity improvement through continuous awareness training programs conducted by NAF, they are unable to bear the charges towards the same. Keeping in view of the poor status of these smallholder farmers and the national interest to revive Indian Agriculture, NAF requests support from the benevolent to help the small and marginal farmers, to meet the partial expenses towards soil testing for their farms and providing crop advisory services to improve their crop productivity and soil fertility:

• Support a farmer – Rs.500 and multiples of 500 thereafter
• Support a farmers’ group – Rs.5,000
• Support a farmers’ club – Rs.15,000

All remittances may please be made only by cheque/DD favouring ‘National Agro Foundation’ payable at Chennai and sent by post/courier to R&D Centre, Taramani. We also furnish our Bank details:

• Corporation Bank, T.Nagar Branch, SB A/c : SB01003328, Branch Code : 0491, RTGS/ IFSC Code : CORP0000491

This support to take up technology based agriculture and to improve the crop productivity and soil fertility will go a long way in the interest of the Nation to turn around Agriculture by supporting the majority stakeholders of Indian agriculture, the small and marginal farming communities.

S S Rajsekar
Managing Trustee