Debt waivers can't be a solution to farmers' problems: Singh

Waiving off farm debt cannot be a solution to farmers' issues and rather the focus should be on helping them increase yields with minimum investment, Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh said today.
"If farm debt waiver was a real solution to farmers' problems, they would not have committed suicides. The RBI governor has also spoken about it (farm debt waiver) and made his point clear. The solution lies in increasing crop yields with minimum investment," Singh said after the annual summit of All India Agriculture Students' Association here.
Recently, RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan had questioned the rationale behind government's farm debt waiver programmes and had said that such schemes have constrained flow of credit to farmers.

The government keeps receiving various suggestions to address farmers' issues. "However, most of them are far from the ground reality," he said, adding that he is travelling across the country to understand the ground reality.
To promote balanced use of fertilisers, the Minister said that the government will in January launch a scheme to issue soil health cards to farmers in the country.
With this card, farmers will be able to use fertilisers as per the advice of soil testing laboratories about the nutrient content of the soil, Singh added.
He also said that the Agriculture Ministry is working with other ministries including Rural Development and Water Resources to finalise the contours of the proposed 'Pradhan Mantri Sichai Yojana' in 2015.

The Minister emphasised that youth could play an important role. He mentioned that in the first and second quarter of 2014-15, a growth of 8.5 per cent and 13.2 per cent has been registered over the corresponding first and second quarter of 2013-14 in fish production.