Agriculture remains Indian economy’s mainstay, which is amply reflected in the country’s Union Budget for 2014-15 which Finance Minister Arun Jaitely presented in the Lok Sabha on July 10 where he touched upon almost every area critical to accelerating the pace of farming growth. While there are a host of pragmatic provisions, the announcement of the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sinchai Yojana to take irrigation water to each and every agricultural field in the country is most laudable. It is sad that out of the 14 crore hectares of agricultural land in India, only 44% is under irrigation and this scheme is clearly aimed to address this basic challenge.
Deteriorating soil health has been a cause of concern and leads to sub optimal utilisation of farming resources. The initiative to provide every farmer with a soil health card in a mission mode is a welcome move, as soil conservation is key to maintaining high productivity. As a very large number of landless farmers are unable to provide land title as guarantee, institutional finance is denied to them and they become vulnerable to money lenders’ usurious lending. It is being addressed to put in place 5 lakh joint farming groups of Bhoomi Heen Kisan through NABARD in the current financial year.
Price volatility in the agriculture produce creates uncertainties and hardship for the farmers for which a price stabilisation fund has been created. Farmers and consumers’ interests will be further served by increasing competition and integrating markets across the country. To accelerate setting up of a national market, the Central government will work closely with the state governments to re-orient their respective APMC Acts to provide for the establishment of private market yards or private markets. The state governments will also be encouraged to develop farmers’ markets in town areas to enable the farmers to sell their produce directly.
The issue of profitability of small holding based agriculture has assumed importance in view of increasing proportion of small and marginal farmers in the country.
With the commitment to sustaining a growth of four per cent in agriculture, there is a need to bring technology driven second green revolution with focus on higher productivity and included ‘protein revolution’ as an area of major focus. Agriculture as an activity is most prone to the vagaries of climate change. To meet this challenge, a ‘National Adaptation Fund’ for climate change will be established.
Similarly, the north eastern region of India has tremendous potential for development of organic farming. With a growing global demand for organic food, people living in this region can reap rich harvest from the development of commercial organic farming.
Banks are providing strong credit support to the agriculture sector. Under the interest subvention scheme for short term crop loans, the banks are extending loans to farmers at a concessional rate of seven per cent. The farmers get a further incentive of three per cent for timely repayment. The share of long term investment credit in agriculture is going down as compared to short term crop loan. This is severely hampering the asset creation in agriculture and allied activities. In order to give a boost to long term investment credit in agriculture, the budget provides for setting up Long Term Rural Credit Fund in the NABARD for the purpose of providing refinance support to co-operative banks and regional rural banks (RRBs) with an initial corpus of Rs 5,000 crore.
Emphasis on agriculture education and research and development (R&D) infrastructure is a welcome move. The Centre intends to establish two institutions of excellence in Assam and Jharkhand along with setting up an ‘Agri-Tech Infrastructure Fund.’ New agriculture universities in Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan and horticulture universities in Telangana and Haryana will add new dimension to the country’s ongoing research in farming sector.
Increasing warehousing capacity for increasing the shelf life of agriculture produces and thereby the earning capacity of the farmers is of utmost importance. Keeping in view the urgent need for availability of scientific warehousing infrastructure in the country, the Centre has proposed an allocation of Rs 5,000 crore for 2014-15.
Similarly, the nascent agri-biotech cluster in Mohali will be scaled up to include plant-genetic and phenotype platforms. Secondary agriculture will be a major thrust in Mohali through collaborations in the public and private sector. In addition, two new clusters, in Pune and Kolkata will be established. At the request of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Finance Ministry has exempted service tax on loading, unloading, storage, warehousing and transportation of cotton, whether ginned or baled, to bring it on par with certain other agricultural produce.
The National Mission on Agricultural Extension and Technology (NMAET) which encompasses extension, information communication technology (ICT), seeds, agricultural mechanisation and plant protection aims to restructure and strengthen agricultural extension to enable delivery of appropriate technology and improved agronomic practices to the farmers through interactive methods of information dissemination, use of ICT, capacity building and institution strengthening; to improve reach of farm mechanisation to small and marginal farmers by various means including promotion of custom hiring centres.
Public-private-partnership is being encouraged in the extension and training components of the mission. Genuine and reputed non-governmental organisations (NGOs), para-extension workers, Farmers Organizations etc. are encouraged to participate and provide extension and training services and guidance to farmers to improve agricultural production and productivity. Besides this input dealers and-agripreneurs are also trained to give advisories to the farmers.
Given the importance of improving post-harvest management practices including cleaning and grading, there is a need for the promotion of cleaning, sorting and grading of foodgrains at producer’s level as per the grade standards formulated and notified after consultations with stakeholders including states and through provision of subsidy for creation or strengthening of post-harvest infrastructure including storage and other post-harvest infrastructure and capacity building.
It is being done under the Integrated Scheme for Agriculture Marketing (ISAM). It is good to note that the Central government has taken up the management of soil health and fertility under the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture to promote soil test based balanced and judicious use of fertilisers.
For judicious use of fertilisers, the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) advocates split application and placement of fertilisers, use of slow releasing nutrient fertilisers and nitrification inhibitors, growing leguminous crops and use of resource conservation technologies.
ICAR has developed technologies for preparation of enriched or vermin compost from various organic wastes, developed improved strains of bio-fertilisers specific to different crops and soil types, and prepared geo-referenced soil fertility maps of 171 districts which are useful in monitoring soil fertility and fertiliser recommendations for balanced nutrient application.
14 Nov 2024