Double farm growth rate to 4%, says PM

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said that farmers should be paid remunerative prices and the country must aim at achieving four per cent annual growth in agriculture production to ensure food security.

"Our agricultural production should increase at a rate fast enough to ensure food security for our growing population," Singh said in his convocation address at the G B Pant Agriculture University here.

He said investment in the agricultural sector needs to increase and farm markets should be reformed. "Farmers need to be provided remunerative prices for their produce," he said.

The Prime Minister said efforts must be made to double the farm production. "We must endeavour to raise our agricultural growth rate from around two per cent per annum to four per cent."

In view of drought and floods in some parts of the country, growth in India's farm production was merely 0.2 per cent in fiscal 2009-10 against an overall economic expansion of 7.4 per cent.

The Prime Minister said the economic growth has to be inclusive but it cannot happen "if it does not benefit our farmers, especially those who are small and marginal".

Complimenting the G B Pant University, which is completing 50 years of its inception, Singh, however, said that "there is a widespread feeling that there has not been any really big breakthrough in agricultural technologies since the Green Revolution of the late 1960s".

He said this was a big challenge for the Indian Council for Agriculture Research, agricultural universities and scientists.