Odisha cabinet approves Agriculture Policy 2020

Odisha cabinet, headed by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, on Tuesday approved the Agriculture Policy 2020, 'SAMRIDHI' with objectives including ensuring continuous growth in farmers income, making the growth process inclusive of small and marginal farmers, ensuring sustainable, stable and scalable agriculture growth.

Speaking to media, Principal Secretary Agriculture, Saurabh Garg said, "New Agriculture Policy is mainly focused on the things like crop diversification, market linkage and use of technology. We will focus on the diversification of paddy to the high-value crop during the rabi crop season.

Garg added, "Regarding the linkage with the market, we will focus on providing better market linkage to farmers by strengthening the mechanism what we have and thirdly our focus will be on the use of technology to increase the income of the farmers." Along with the traditional crops, fisheries and livestock will be in focus, Garg stated and added, "We will also emphasise to facilitate the farmers for the optimal use of resources and opportunities for overall development".'SAMRIDHI' is based on the eight components which include "(Science) and Technology, (Adaptation) to Climate Change, (Markets) Domestic and Global, Physical and financial, (Resource) use efficiency ensuring higher productivity, creating appropriate (infrastructure), (Diversification) of production to high-value agriculture, (Human resource) upgrading and skilling and strengthening (Institutions).