India will support implementation of G-20 commitments: Radha Mohan Singh

Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh today said India will continue to extend their support in early implementation of past commitments made at the G20 Agriculture Ministers Meetings particularly on research and development, knowledge transfer, action to combat food loss and waste, and information and communication technologies.

Addressing the G-20 Agriculture Ministers' Meeting at Berlin, Germany, Singh also supported the proposal of strengthening AMIS and suggested sharing of best practices in this regard.

He added that in India, ICT has proved to be an effective and powerful medium to disseminate information on agronomic practices, prices and fertiliser and pesticide use.

"Many new initiatives have been taken in order to develop an integrated approach for communication process in the agricultural sector. These include launch of agricultural web portals, mobile apps and a dedicated broadcasting channel," said Singh.

"With the objective to reform the agriculture marketing system in the country, a National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) portal has been launched which provides a pan-India electronic trading," he added.

He further said this e-marketing platform is expected to help farmers in facilitating better price discovery through efficient, transparent and competitive marketing platform; better marketing of agricultural produce; reducing wastages; and getting market related information with access to large number of buyers from within and outside the state through transparent processes.

"In order to promote efficient irrigation practices in the country, a major irrigation programme was launched by the government in 2015 with emphasis on improving water-use efficiency through water conservation, rainwater harvesting and use of micro-irrigation. The programme aims at providing end-to-end solutions in irrigation supply chain, water sources, distribution network, farm level applications and extension services on new technologies and information," Singh said.

The programme is being implemented in a mission mode with aim of completing 99 major and medium irrigation projects with the capacity of 76.03 lakh hectare by December, 2019.

He said the role of G20 economies in achieving the sustainable global food security assumes significant importance, adding there is a growing consensus that the challenges of maintaining food and nutritional security need innovative solutions through collaborative and coordinated policies among the member as well as non-member countries.

The Union Minister also said that the world economy has made strides in increasing the global food production, but the emerging challenges of climate complexities, scarcity of natural resources, degrading soil heath and fragmentation of land holdings pose serious risks in sustaining this growth momentum.