India to support implementation of past commitments at G20: Minister

Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh on Sunday said India was for the early implementation of past commitments made at the G20 Agriculture Ministers Meetings.

The minister said India was also committed to Research and Development, collaboration and knowledge transfer and action to combat food loss and waste, and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).

According to an official statement, the minister supported the proposal of strengthening of Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) and underscored the importance of assessment of stocks and suggested sharing of best practices in this regard.

"In India, ICT has proved to be an effective and powerful medium to disseminate information on agronomic practices, prices, fertiliser and pesticide use and weather and pest related advisories. Many new initiatives have been taken in order to develop an integrated approach for communication process in the agricultural sector," said the statement quoting Singh.

The initiatives include launch of agricultural web portals, mobile apps and a dedicated broadcasting channel, National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) portal.

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

"The world economy has made strides in increasing the global food production, but the emerging challenges of increasing climate complexities, stress on natural resources, degrading soil heath and fragmentation of land holdings pose serious risks in sustaining this growth momentum," Singh said,

"Other major issues particularly faced by the developing and under developed economies include poor marketing infrastructure, food losses and wastage, low coverage of institutional agricultural credit, and insuring farmers' produce from frequent climatic variations."

--IANS

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