A profile of target districts in Andhra Pradesh demography, land use and agriculture

Abstract

The newly created Andhra Pradesh State in June 2014, has embarked on designing an innovative path of development. Through its Swarnandhra Vision-2029 by the year 2022, it strives to reach top three states category in India. Primary Sector Mission was the pioneer (out of the seven missions) to form and function from October 2014. It has designed a separate strategy to move towards a double digit growth through 13 pilot sites for innovations (each with ~ 10,000 ha area in all the 13 districts) adopting best practices to boost up productivity and improve livelihoods of small and marginal farmers through science-led scaling-up process. It covers agriculture, horticulture, livestock and fisheries sector. Through a series of consultation meetings and capacity building workshops, the Mission has developed action plansfor the next four years and being implemented for the year 2015-16. Also identified potential areas for pivotal role by Farmer Producer Organizations, NGOs, and PPP options for value addition and marketing. Technical assistance for the primary sector is provided by a consortium of scientific organisations led by the International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics; it includes CGIAR institutes, ICAR institutes, State Universities of agriculture, horticulture, livestock and fisheries, besides nongovernmental organisations and private companies. Effective governance mechanism is the hall mark of this Mission. Monitoring system has been designed and institutionalized by the Center for Good Governance. The governing body is chaired by the Chief Minister, Agricultural Production Commissioner and Special Chief Secretary of the Planning Department is the Mission Director and Special Chief Secretary/Principal Secretary of the Agricultural Department is the Mission Coordinator.