BHUBANESWAR: The State Government on Tuesday decided to implement National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (NAIS) during kharif-2014. This was decided at the State-level Coordination Committee meeting held under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary JK Mohapatra.
Considering the comparative advantage of NAIS, it has been decided to adopt the scheme during current kharif season as it puts less premium burden on farmers and also provides 100 per cent crop insurance coverage, said a senior officer of the Cooperation department.
The premium is only around 2.5 per cent of the value of all major crops. A subsidy upto 10 per cent has also been envisaged for small and marginal farmers having land holding of two
hectares or less.
Mohapatra directed the officials to make the process less burdensome and more farmer-friendly. It was decided that insurance enrolment will be done by Agricultural Insurance Company of India.
Under NAIS, the unit area for insurance of paddy will be the gram panchayats, municipalities and NACs. For crops like maize, groundnut, jute, cotton, red gram, niger, turmeric, ginger and banana, the unit area of insurance will be the block.
Angul, Balangir, Dhenkanal, Ganjam, Kalahandi, Nuapada, Bargarh, Keonjhar, Mayurbhanj and Gajpati districts will be covered under groundnut insurance. Maize insurance will be available in 15 districts. Fifteeen blocks of Koraput, Nabarangpur, Rayagada, Phulbani and Kalahandi districts have been enlisted for niger crop insurance while Balasore, Bhadrak, Jajpur, Cuttack, Puri, Jagatsinghpur, Kendrapara, Keonjhar and Mayurbhanj have been enlisted for jute crop insurance. Turmeric crop of Kandhamal district and ginger crop in 19 blocks of Kandhamal, Koraput and Sambalpur districts will be covered under the scheme.
The directorates of Economics and Statistics, Agriculture and Food Production and Horticulture have been asked to furnish yield rate of the identified crops being enumerated under the supervision of the Cooperation department for onward transmission to the company in time.