Four-pronged strategy to double farmers' income: Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said his government has a four-pronged strategy to double farmers' income by 2022, while reiterating that farmers would be given Minimum Support Price (MSP) of 1.5 times of the input cost for notified crops.

In an interview to Swarajya magazine, Modi also said the farmers would also get more opportunities to get the right price for their crops through the e-NAM initiative.

He said there was a need to augment the sources of income and decrease the risks to make the farmers prosperous, for which his government had fixed the aim of doubling their income by 2022.

"We are following a four-pronged strategy to achieve the goal of doubling farmers' income: decrease the input costs, ensure proper prices for the produce, ensure minimal harvest and post-harvest losses, and create more avenues for income generation," he said.

"If you focus closely on our policy interventions, they are aimed at helping farmers at every step - 'Beej Se Bazaar Tak' (from the seed to the market).

"Not only will the farmers get minimum support price of 1.5 times their cost, they also have more avenues to get the right price with the help of e-NAM (the electronic National Agricultural Market, which provides price, production and market information to farmers)," he said.

The Prime Minister also said the BJP-led NDA government had allocated Rs 2.12 lakh crore to agriculture in the five-year period against Rs 1.21 lakh crore by previous Congress-led UPA government.

"But unlike them, our initiatives do not stay limited to the files, but enter the field," he told the magazine.

Modi also said that farmers were "forced" to do farming in unscientific ways during the UPA rule.

"They (farmers) had to often bear the brunt of lathis for obtaining urea, they did not have a proper crop insurance cover, nor did they get proper prices for their produce," he said.

"To make farming scientific, farmers are now equipped with soil health cards. Shortage and scarcity of urea is a thing of past and neem-coated urea is improving productivity. Now the farmer has a holistic crop insurance cover with PM Fasal Bima Yojana."

Modi also urged the private sector to increase investment in agriculture as its share is only 1.75 per cent of total investment.

"From technology to food processing and from modern machinery to research, there is huge scope for the private sector. If the market savviness and global best practices orientation of the private sector meet the hard work and determination of our farmers, it is a win-win for both the farmers and the private sector," he said.

--IANS

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