8/14/2019 Agricultural sector in 2020.docx

1/1

Indian Agriculture achieves 300 Million tonnes food production:

Nitish Singh.

The food and agriculture ministry has announced today that the Production of major crops

has reached to record levels in the century, which has estimated to 300 million tonnes in

2019-2020. By this figure the share of agriculture in total GDP has risen to 25%.

The Food and Agriculture Minister Nitish Singh has said the record production has been

achieved due to development of rural infrastructure and organic farming. But also he

added that the spending on the agriculture research need to be increased from current 3%

to 5% of GDP. India has achieved annual 2% agricultural growth rate and there has been

surplus of food grains in the country for record 5 years. While the agriculture is on high

growth, it has provided direct employment to 30% of the population. Then he announced

the awards to scientists of CSIR and ICAR for their contribution in the development of

organic farming, which resulted in another Green Revolution in the South Asian region.

The country's rice production has been estimated to reach to 150 million tonnes. Thegrowth rate of food production has been raised to 5%, which has exceeded the growth of

population. This has resulted in increase in per capita food availability from 444 gram a

day in 2010 to 800 gram a day in 2020.

The country has adopted several reforms in its policy towards agricultural development

which has resulted in substantial growth in agricultural products and welfare of the rural

sector. Though the government spending has been much reduced by reduction in

subsidies being provided on agricultural equipments, there has been phenomenal

improvement in the performance of this sector. The foremost attention has been towards

building up of the irrigation facility through several schemes funded by Asian Developmentbank. While the global irrigated area has grown at an average rate of 2% per year, the

irrigated lands in India have grown by 3%. The dependence on groundwater has reduced

substantially. Now the irrigated land has increased to 80% of the total agricultural land,

which has contributed to increased productivity.

With the advent of organic farming in the beginning of the decade, there has been

significant growth in the production of food grains per area of land, with 30% of land

converted to organic farms. There is lesser dependency on fertilizers and related

subsidies by the government on them. It has reduced the burden of the government on

facilitating these subsidies and let the increase in the savings which could be diverted todevelopment of necessary rural infrastructure.

With substantial spending on infrastructure for retailing at mandisand development of

farmers cooperatives, community welfare centres have evolved to be the major drivers of

the improvement in the rural sector and development of new markets for rural products.

Through the training programs to the farmers about handling, storing, transporting,

packing etc through several institutes CISR, IISR and ICAR, the stocks have been

developed in the local markets. Credit availability for farmers and retail traders have been

the major focus of Rural Economic development policies in the decade. There have been

establishment of several sustainable financial intermediaries by the NABARD sponsoredagriculture credit programs and partnership of participating commercial banks and private

financial institutions.