Badal seeks centre's help to save agriculture

Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Sunday urged the central government to set up a committee for making agriculture a profitable venture.

Seeking immediate central intervention and a "concrete action plan to bail out the farmers from current agrarian crisis on one hand and checking the farm suicides on the other", Badal said that agriculture was facing an acute crisis.

"The need of the hour was to save it to ensure that country's food security is not in peril. The committee should be asked to give its recommendations at the earliest and the union government must take no time in implementing it," Badal said while talking to media in Sangrur district, 110 km from here.

"Agriculture is no longer a profitable venture as its input cost has increased manifold whereas the farmers are not getting remunerative prices of their harvest," he noted.

The chief minister said that powers regarding agriculture in the country were in the hands of the central government and the state governments have hardly any role in fixing the prices of crops or that of agricultural inputs.

Seeking immediate revision of the minimum support price (MSP) for agriculture produce, Badal said: "This must be implemented for the safeguarding the interests of the peasantry. Any further delay in this regard will prove fatal and the agriculture in the country will be ruined."

Green Revolution state Punjab, with just 1.54 percent of geographical area of the country, contributes over 50 percent of the food grains (wheat and paddy) to the central kitty.