india

Updated: Sep 08, 2017 23:47 IST

Increasing productivity is a key component of the strategy formed by the ministry of agriculture and farmer’s welfare in order to double farmers’ income by 2022, Union agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh wrote in a blog post on his personal website on Friday.

“For the first time, a Prime Minister has put such a target in front of the nation for the welfare of farmers…The ministry is working on a seven-point Strategy to double farmers’ income by 2022. We are working in a planned manner. The first point is to increase productivity,”he wrote.

With less than half of India’s 142 million hectare agriculture land, under institutional irrigation, the government aimed to “provide water to every field” with the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana launched on July 1, 2015, facilitating end-to-end solution in irrigation supply chains, water resources and network distribution, Singh wrote.

The minister said the government would complete pending medium and large irrigation projects in the next four years.

“Water harvesting, management, and watershed development projects have been put on the fast track,” Singh added. Productivity will also get a boost by the effective use of inputs “which means increasing production through improved seeds, organic farming and Soil Health Card ”.

According to the 68-year-old, the government planned to work on reducing post-harvest losses by increasing storage capacity and integrated cold chains in rural areas.

“We want to ensure that a large part of the profit reaches the farmer and the role of intermediaries minimises,” Singh wrote, elaborating on the government’s online agriculture marketing platform e-NAM. “So far, 455 mandis have been linked to this platform,” he added.

With better crop insurance facilities being initiated under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) to reduce losses, the compensation amount for farmers has been increased by 1.5 times from last year, the Union minister wrote.