Panellists discuss ways to uplift the farmer community and urged the ministries for better policies in place
The last day of 12th Agrovision had a panel discussion on ‘Enhancing GDP and Farmers Income.’ The panel discussion had Narayan Tatu Rane, Minister For Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, Nitin Gadkari, Chief Patron, Agrovision, Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways, G Chandrashekhar Aiyar, Economist, Senior Journalist, Policy Commentator with a passion for agriculture; Dr N Persuraman, Principal Scientist, MSSRF; Ajay Vir Jakhar, Chairman, Bharat Krishak Samaj; Dr Agyeya Tripathi, Finance Expert; Sujit Sahgal, author; Dr Ashish Paturkar, Vice-Chancellor, Maharashtra Animal and Fishery Sciences University (MAFSU), Nagpur; Devendra Parekh, Past President, Vidarbha Economic Development Council (VED); Girish Gandhi, Organiser, Agrovision; Krishan Bir Chaudhary, President, Bharatiya Krishak Samaj; Ajay Vir Jakhar, Chairman, Bharat Krishi Samaj and Ravi Boratkar, MD, MM Activ Sci-Tech Communications, Publisher, MMA publications and Chairperson, Agrovision Foundation and Milind Kokje, Chief Editor, Agrospectrum.
The session started with Gadkari discussing the challenges faced by the farmers in the Vidarbha region and how Government of India has been proactively finding solutions to help the farmer community. He mentioned ethanol-based fuel produced from sugarcane, the use of drones in farmlands and nano urea where the wastage of it will minimal.
Discussing the various opportunities in the agriculture sector with MSME Minister and Agriculture Minister, Gadkari added, “We need to work on preparing a policy on (use of) drones in the farm sector. Drones are related to agro and MSME can generate about 50 lakh jobs in the rural sector in one year. Besides, it will benefit farmers too.”
Ajay Vir Jakhar talked about the need for a modified agri policy in place that will be helpful for farmers. He urged the ministers for better coordination among all the stakeholders for the upliftment of the sector and developing the food system in the entire country.
Chandrasekhar talked about proper training mechanisms in the MSME sector, educational programmes in the food processing sector through a cluster approach in hedging for commodity price risk management. According to him, there should be a focus to reduce price volatility, on growing cereal pulses, need to relook at import-export policy and all stakeholders should work together. The government need to impose a duty on import, price risk management on MSME, provision on MSP and import-export policy, which is what Chandrasekhar mentioned at the event.
Tripathi mentioned about the need to upgrade agri entrepreneurship, promote FPOs. He urged the farmers to act as managers. Mentioning that though there are policies in place, there is a lack of implementation which the government needs to look into. Schemes are many but proper awareness is needed for the upliftment of the sector. Apart from this, he also mentioned setting up SDG goals.
Rane opined about how his ministry will look into the food processing sector, on how an increase in agri GDP is going to have a positive impact on farmers. He assured that his ministry will look into the farmer’s and hoped for positive outcomes for the sector.
