President cautions not to ignore farm sector

Mukherjee underscored that it was vital that the farm sector grows at a much faster pace for alleviating poverty, promoting inclusive growth, ensuring food security, create employment and boost rural income.

"I understand that the contribution of agriculture to the country's GDP is declining and is lower than services and industry sector today. But I would exhort you to resist any temptation to be persuaded by some arguments to give only proportionate importance to this sector. Nothing could be more wrong," he said at a CII conference.

"Giving agriculture the importance in proportion to its contribution to GDP may be as fallacious as attaching to the heart the importance in proportion to its weight in the human body," he observed.

The President said the share of agriculture sector to the country's GDP has declined to 15.2 per cent during 11th Five Year Plan (2007-2012) from 23.4 per cent in the 9th Plan.

Blaming vagaries of monsoon for wide variation in farm growth in the last 15 years, he emphasised the need to "liberate the sector from the fetters of nature to extent possible like the advanced nations have done."

Mukherjee said that the agri-gowth rate of 2.1 per cent in the first half of this financial year is "not very encouraging", but he expected the second half would be better.

Stating that the agriculture sector has adopted some element of next generation revolution, he said, "I would like to envision a second Green Revolution in agriculture that is more hollistic and widespread."

To achieve targeted 4 per cent growth in 12th Five Year Plan (2012-2017), Mukherjee said the emphasis should be placed on raising yields through use of hybrid seeds, improving seed replacement rate, better water management and balanced use of fertilisers and pesticides. MORE