Centre convenes state agri secys meet next week

The Centre has convened a meeting of state agriculture secretaries next week to find ways to protect the interests of farmers from crop loss due to natural calamities and give them adequate compensation.
Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh told Lok Sabha that his Ministry has convened the meeting seeking the state governments' suggestions on how to deal with issues like crop damage due to droughts, floods, heat waves, cold waves and give farmers adequate compensation through crop insurance policies.
"Central government wants to involve the state governments to formulate strategy on how to protect the interests of farmers and how to give them better returns to their agricultural produce," he said.

The Agriculture Minister said he had written a letter to all Chief Ministers on July 7 asking them their suggestions on how to solve the problems in agriculture sector and help the farmers.
"I would like to seek suggestions from all honourable MPs too in this endeavour," he said replying to a supplementary question.
Singh said even though some of the private insurance companies were engaged in crop insurance in states like Maharashtra and Gujarat, they were withdrawn later due to certain issues.

The Minister said Indian agriculture is susceptible to vagaries of nature like droughts, floods, hailstorms, unseasonal rains, heat and cold waves and cyclones.

"Nearly 60 per cent of the net sown area under rainfed farming is particularly risk prone due to inadequate, untimely and uneven distribution of rainfall which disincentivises adoption of high yielding varieties of seeds, fertilizers and other costly inputs to maximize crop productivity," he said.
Singh said the major crops identified as risk prone to climate change are rice and wheat in the Indo-Gangetic Plains; rice and sorghum in rainfed regions, Kharif maize in irrigated zones and potato in West Bengal and Southern plateau region.
He said under the National Agricultural Insurance Scheme, farmers get comprehensive risk coverage for standing crops against non-preventable risks like natural fire, lightning, storm, hailstorm, cyclone, hurricane, tornado, flood, inundation, landslide, drought, dry spells, pests, diseases etc.