NEW DELHI: Amid substantial disruption in economic activities due to nationwide lockdown, the Centre on Wednesday said the agriculture sector was expected to rise to the occasion and play an important role in giving normal growth to India’s economy with the help of almost uninterrupted farm operations on the ground in many states.“The farm sector will grow by 3% this year despite adverse conditions and it would add at least 0.5% to India’s GDP growth in 2020-21, said Ramesh Chand Niti Aayog member, while noting better prospect of the sector due to forecast of normal monsoon and adequate water storage in reservoirs across the country.Dismissing all recent projections and forecasts that presented a gloomy picture of India’s economic growth due to Covid-19 linked crisis, Chand said he believed that all those forecasts would not hold as agriculture sector, sharing 17% of India’s economy, was functioning quite well at the time when almost 60% economic activities were just closed.Noting that the agriculture and allied sector's growth stood at 3.7% during the 2019-20 fiscal, Chand said if you looked at it at current price level, it would come to 11.3% which was 60% more than the growth rate of non-agriculture sector.“If you look at the history of growth of India’s economy since 1951, it is rare that the growth rate of agriculture sector exceeds growth rate of non-agriculture sector by so much margin,” said Chand while expressing his confidence that the farm sector would rescue the economy the way it did in difficult times in the past.Union agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar , while addressing a press conference, too held similar views and enlisted all those factors, including timely exemptions from lockdown restrictions, which helped farmers in continuing with their harvest and sowing operations.Underlining that the government is encouraging technology driven solutions to minimise human interface in the farming sector especially in view of social distancing norms to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, Tomar said the government would increase the number of mandis (agri markets) to be linked with e-NAM (National Agriculture Market) platform from 585 now to 685 in next two days and to 1,000 by the end of May.This move will allow farmers to sell their produce without visiting regulated mandis in their respective states. It would also ensure inter-state trade of farm produce to maintain supply chain.