Goal Setting for Indian Agriculture

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her second budget speech, mentioned a 16-point action plan for agriculture sector to ensure sustainable agricultural practice and adoption of modern technologies. Some of these action plans intend to encourage the ­implementation of existing acts by the states, and some of them aim to strengthen the existing schemes and systems. For example, this budget talks about encouraging state governments to implement recent acts like the Model Agricultural Land Leasing Act (2016), the Model Agricultural Produce and Livestock Marketing Act (2017), and the Model Agricultural Produce and Livestock Contract Farming Act (2018); taking up comprehensive measures for water-stressed districts; encouraging the balanced use of fertilisers (chemical as well as organic); extending the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthan Maha­bhiyan (PM-KUSUM) scheme; mapping and geotagging storage facilities; integrating financing on Electronic Negotiable Warehouse Receipts (e-NWR) with the National Agricultural Markets or e-NAM; strengthening the agri-credit space by expanding the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development’s (NABARD) refinance scheme and bringing all beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi  (PM-KISAN) under the Kisan Credit Card (KCC) scheme, among others.

There are two new action points as well, namely the setting up of Kisan Rail for seamless supply of perishable commodities throughout the country and launching Krishi Udaan along national and international routes. The budget speech further mentioned that the government is committed to its declared goal of doubling farmers’ income by 2022.