Govt ken on making Agri policies ‘income centric’ : Radha Mohan

Speed Post News Network

New Delhi : Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Radha Mohan Singh while addressing the National Conference ‘’Agriculture 2022 – Doubling Farmers’ Income’’ on February 19, 2018, in New Delhi, said the government is working towards increasing farmers’ income and that’s the reason the budget for Agriculture has been increased from Rs 51,576 crore in 2017-18 to Rs 58,080 crore for the year 2018-19 ensuring sufficient funds for each component of the Seven-Point’ Strategy devised for doubling farmers’ income.

The inaugural session of the summit was attended among others by Governor of Himachal Pradesh Acharya Devvrat, NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar, Union Minister of State for Agriculture, Farmers’ Welfare & Panchayati Raj Parshottam Rupala, Minister of State  Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, and Minister of State Krishna Raj.

Organized at the NASC Complex at Pusa in New Delhi, the summit is being attended by senior officials from the Central and State Governments, scientists, economists, trade industry, professional associations, representatives of corporate and private sector companies & farmers, NGOs and academics, according to a PIB release.

Radha Mohan said the apart from keeping the food and agricultural products warehouses well-stocked, the Government is keen to see farmers prosper and is working diligently to achieve the same. He said that in this budget, an announcement of Rs 2,000 crore for Agri Market Development Fund has been made, which shows the importance of the retail market in agriculture marketing. These markets have been called GRAM (Gramin Retail Agriculture Market). Through these markets, infrastructure of 22,000 Rural Haats and 585 APMC markets will be developed, he said.

The Minister said that as promised by PM Narendra Modi, the Government had formed a committee in April 2016 to implement a comprehensive plan to double the income of farmers. The Committee included senior economists, Joint Secretaries of food processing, crop, Animal Husbandry and Dairy and Policy Departments, Agricultural Advisor to NITI Aayog and many other non-official members. The Government is keen to make agriculture policies and programmes ‘income centric’ instead of ‘production-oriented’, said Radha Mohan.