Integrated Pest Management Demonstration Cum Training

What is the IPM Demonstration Cum Training scheme?

Integrated Pest Management Demonstration Cum Training is a crop protection activity of the Agriculture - Farmers Welfare Department, Government of Tamil Nadu. The department organises Farmers Field Schools (FFS) in selected village clusters, where a group of farmers is trained on a live crop through a whole season to identify pests, recognise natural enemies and use chemical control only when it is really needed.

According to the scheme database on the department's portal, tnagrisnet.tn.gov.in, the two funded elements are:

• Farmers Field School (FFS), Rs 20,000 per school.
• Integrated Pest Management, plant protection chemicals and bio-agents; Rs 500 per hectare or 50 per cent of the cost, whichever is less.

The demonstration and the training are deliberately joined. A demonstration plot alone teaches nothing if the farmer is not standing in it; a classroom lecture on IPM does not survive contact with a real pest outbreak. The field school format solves both problems by running the training on the demonstration plot, through the crop cycle, with a cluster approach so that neighbouring farmers see the same field.

The myScheme listing for this scheme describes financial assistance for 30 farmers to conduct pest management demonstrations and training using a cluster approach in Farmers Field Schools. Thirty is the conventional group size for a field school; the actual list of participants for any given school is settled by the block Agricultural Officer.

Who can take part in IPM training?

You can be enrolled if:

• You are a farmer cultivating in the village or cluster where the Agriculture Department has sanctioned a Farmers Field School for the season.
• You can produce chitta and adangal for the land you cultivate.
• You are willing to attend the season-long sessions, not just the inaugural meeting. The method depends on repeated observation of the same plot.
• You have an Aadhaar card and a bank account, which are needed for any input subsidy entered in your name.

You are not eligible and cannot apply if:

• Your village has not been selected for a field school that season. Schools are sanctioned in limited numbers against the district's allotment, and the cluster is fixed in advance.
• You cannot produce land records, so the extension centre cannot enter you as a beneficiary for the input component.
• You want only the free inputs without attending the training. The demonstration and the training are a single package.
• You are asking for a crop or component outside the district's sanctioned mission for that year.

Tamil Nadu's agriculture programmes give preference to small and marginal farmers, women farmers and SC/ST farmers where demand for a component exceeds the allotment, and the same practice is followed when a field school group is formed.

What integrated pest management actually involves

IPM is not one product. It is a sequence the field school walks through, week by week:

• Field scouting: counting pests and natural enemies on a fixed number of plants instead of spraying on sight.
• Cultural practices: timely sowing, spacing, trap crops, removal of affected plant parts and destruction of pest carryover.
• Mechanical and physical control, pheromone traps, sticky traps, light traps, hand collection of egg masses.
• Biological control, release of natural enemies and use of bio-agents. Tamil Nadu mission components regularly supply Beauveria bassiana, Metarhizium anisopliae, Pseudomonas fluorescens and Bacillus subtilis.
• Chemical control as the last step — the right chemical at the right dose when the pest crosses the economic threshold level, which is the number the field school teaches farmers to work out for themselves.

The financial support of Rs 500 per hectare for plant protection chemicals and bio-agents is deliberately modest, because the point of IPM is to reduce the number of sprays rather than to fund more of them.

How to apply to join an IPM demonstration cum training programme

1. Ask your block Agricultural Officer or the Agricultural Extension Centre whether a Farmers Field School has been sanctioned for your village or cluster in the coming season.
2. Give your name for the participant list, carrying chitta, adangal, an Aadhaar photocopy and the bank passbook first page with photograph.
3. Attend the inaugural session on the demonstration plot, where the crop, the plot and the schedule of weekly meetings are fixed.
4. Take part in the season-long sessions; field scouting, agro-ecosystem analysis, comparison of the IPM plot against the farmer's usual practice, and the decision on when to spray.
5. Collect the subsidised plant protection chemicals and bio-agents entered against your holding from the extension centre, or buy them and submit the bill with field photographs where the component is run as a back-ended subsidy.
6. Register the input component online if your district is running it that way: open tnagrisnet.tn.gov.in, use Benefit Registration or the Uzhavan app, select the Agriculture department and the relevant mission and component, and upload the land records.
7. Attend the field day at the end of the season, where the results of the IPM plot are shown to farmers of the surrounding villages.

How to check your record and any input subsidy

1. Ask the Agricultural Extension Centre to show your entry in the field school participant list and in the input beneficiary register.
2. Log in to the benefit registration section of tnagrisnet.tn.gov.in with the mobile number used at registration.
3. Use the Uzhavan app for scheme and input status on a phone.
4. For a back-ended input claim, watch the bank passbook or SMS alerts for the credit and go back to the extension centre with the bill acknowledgement if nothing arrives.

Why farmers miss out

• The village was not selected for a field school that season. Ask the block office to propose your cluster for the next season.
• Irregular attendance. A farmer who comes to one session cannot be counted as trained, and the participant list is checked.
• Adangal does not show the crop, so the input entry cannot be certified.
• Name mismatch between chitta and Aadhaar, usually after inheritance. Get the land record corrected at the village administrative office.
• Bill without field photographs in a back-ended year. The department's own document list asks for photo documentation.
• Allotment exhausted for plant protection inputs in the district.

Key dates and cycle

Farmers Field Schools are organised at the start of a crop season, because the training has to run alongside the crop from sowing to harvest. There is no published last date to apply. The practical window is the few weeks before sowing, when the block office fixes the village, the crop and the participant list. The department's crop-wise seed calendar on tnagrisnet.tn.gov.in is a good guide to when those weeks fall in your district.

Help and grievance route

• Department of Agriculture, Chepauk, Chennai 600005 to 044-28583323.
• Email; coa.fcms@gmail.com.
• Block Agricultural Officer and Agricultural Extension Centre, for enrolment, participant lists and input allotment.
• Uzhavar Aluvalar Thodarbu Thittam, the farmer-officer contact programme, for grievances the block office does not settle.
• Agri petition registration on tnagriculture.in for a written complaint.

No fee is charged to take part in a Farmers Field School, and subsidised plant protection inputs must be issued at the notified rate. Report any demand for extra payment to the Joint Director of Agriculture of the district.