Minister of State for Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Parshottam Rupala, in reply to a question in Lok Sabha listed various steps being undertaken by the govt to enhance the income of farmers in the country.
Rupala said the Government has drafted a new model Agricultural Produce and Livestock Marketing (Promotion & Facilitation) Act, 2017, released in April this year for adoption by the States through legislation of their respective Acts.
The Act provides options of alternate markets beyond the existing APMC regulated market yards including private markets, direct marketing, farmer-consumer markets, special commodity markets etc.
He also mentioned about the Market Intervention Scheme (MIS) for procurement of agricultural and horticultural commodities not covered under the Minimum Price Support Scheme on the request of State and UT Government. The MIS is implemented in order to protect the growers of these commodities from distress sale.
The government led other market interventions such as Price Stabilization Fund and Food Corporation of India operations also supplement efforts to enhance the income of farmers, he underlined.
The government is also focusing on ancillary activities like Bee-keeping for increasing of farmers’ income.
Other steps that he listed included Soil Health Card (SHC), Neem Coated Urea, Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY) , Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana (PMKSY), National Agriculture Market scheme (e-NAM), among others.
The Modi government provides interest subvention of 3% on short-term crop loans up to Rs.3.00 lakh. Presently, loan is available to farmers at an interest rate of 7% per annum, which gets reduced to 4% on prompt repayment, the Minister added.
Despite all the tall claims, there is no stopping incidents of suicides by farmers across the states. A defensive govt is trying its best to explain its weak position, retorted Opposition party leaders.
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