 "Agri min Tomar launches portal for testing performance of farm machinery")
Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Thursday launched a portal where manufacturers can online apply for testing and evaluation their farm machineries.
The minister launched the 'Centralized Farm Machinery Performance Testing Portal' to improve services of farm machinery testing institutions and bring out transparency in the entire process of testing and evaluation of machines, an official statement said.
Ministers of State for Agriculture Parshottam Rupala and Kailash Choudhary as well as Agriculture Secretary Sanjay Agarwal were present on the occasion.
Tomar said the government is fully committed to the welfare of farmers and development of the agriculture sector and accordingly the budget allocation of the agriculture sector has also been considerably increased.
The minister said there has been significant increase in adoption of agricultural machines which has resulted in the phenomenal expansion of cropped area, cropping diversity and the country's agricultural production.
To promote agricultural mechanization, he appealed to industry representatives to design farm equipment which can be utilized in cost effective manner by small and marginal farmers.
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"This portal will facilitate manufacturers in applying, communicating and monitoring the progress of testing of their machines in a seamless manner as it is easily accessible from any location and from any device connected to the Internet," the statement said.
The portal will help in improving the efficiency of the testing institutes thereby reducing testing time for various agricultural machines and equipment.
"Testing of farm machines is an important aspect of agricultural mechanization which benefits both buyers i.e. farmers as well as the manufacturers of agricultural machinery.
"Testing and evaluation of agricultural machinery encourages improvement in quality and functional suitability. Comparable data for similar machines is available to manufacturers, which help them in improving the design of their product...," the statement said.