Swaminathan panel report being implemented: Agriculture minister

The government is implementing the Swaminathan Commission report for improving living standards of farmers and upliftment of farm sector, said agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh.

In order to implement policy reforms and new schemes in agriculture, in the past few years, the government has taken several measures and a budgetary provision of .`2,11,694 crore has been made, he added.

National Commission on Farmers (NCF) president Swaminathan had advised the then government, in his report in 2006, that proper attention should be given to the welfare of farmers along with agro-based thinking, Singh said.

“The NCF had made a number of recommendations for enhancing the income of farmers. Keeping them in mind, the government has implemented a lot of reformatory schemes,” Singh added.

The government has introduced the Model Agricultural Land Leasing Act, 2016 to all states which is a very important step in agricultural reforms, said Singh.

“The interests of both – the land holders and the recipient of the lease – are protected. The implementation of market reforms has led to enhancement of transparency in the market. The e-NAM scheme links agriculture markets across the country.”

Apart from 585 mandis of the country, the government has set up National Agricultural Market. It is focusing on open trade between the mandis and there are 22,000 rural markets across the country through which small farmers will be able to sell their produce in an effective way, said Singh.

Keeping in view the recommendations of the NCF to increase productivity and eliminate malnutrition, 795 improved varieties of crops have been developed in the last four years by ICAR out of which 495 varieties are tolerant to climate change, said Singh. “These have been handed over to farmers so that they can take advantage of the advanced varieties.”

“Farmers provide an important direction to the efforts made in economic reforms. Therefore, to make radical changes in the system, proper emphasis should be given to post-harvest marketing and related arrangements. Keeping in view the unabated erosion of natural resources and climate change, the agriculture commission had also called for attention to the management of science-based natural resources and sustainable production and development,” said the agriculture minister.

The government has taken a number of initiatives for the development of agriculture sector, remunerative returns for farmers’ produce and reducing the cost of production, he added. “These efforts have resulted in significant transformation in their lives. Establishing the nationwide soil health card scheme is an important aspect of this thought,” said Singh.

Apart from this, the government has created corpus funds for improving the infrastructure for dairy, cooperative, fisheries and aquaculture, animal husbandry, agriculture market and micro irrigation.

“The government has adopted an income-oriented approach towards sustainable production keeping in mind the welfare of agriculture, farmers and the consumers,” said Singh.