Budget 2023-24 wishlist: Here're the key challenges in agriculture sector

With an aggregate sectoral value in excess of $450 billion, agriculture has continued to play an important role in fostering livelihoods and ensuring food and nutritional security in India.

The emerging trends in Indian agribusiness point at the shift in focus from a production-driven sector to market-driven factors. 

While the agriculture growth and diversification story has been a result of a right mix of policy and processes pushed over a period of time, there a few bottlenecks which call for attention.

Industry ask

• Activating the adoption of next-gen agri-tech
• More focus to ease investments  through ease of doing agri-business 
• Supply chain optimisation, better market linkages
• Support to agri-infra and primary processing infra 
• Enhanced strategic nudge in joint initiatives

Key challenges

• Despite increase in overall budget, budgetary allocation to agricultural research and education remains low over the years
• There is a strong need to create a strong framework for agri-edtech
• To enhance the farm power availability, clean energy could be one of the potential source of energy
• There is a significant headroom for agri infrastructure & logisticse
• Making full stack data available for all will help in facilitating last-mile delivery