Spotlight Sep 6: Discussion on Initiatives for Doubling the Farmer’s Income.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBE2ia0YifY

AGRICULTURE/ GOVERNANCE

Initiatives for Doubling the Farmer’s Income

Context: Huge distress has hit the Agricultural sector due to environmental impacts, policy paralysis, debt trap etc. has led to large amount of farmer suicides across the country particularly in the Deccan plateau. 

Brief Background

Issues

Doubling Farmer’s Income by 2022

The vision of doubling agricultural income can’t be achieved only through farm activities. It requires an integrated approach that clubs livestock rearing, other non-farm activities and the cooperative model into the income package of farmers.

Doubling farmers’ incomes include three themes:

A. Enabling digital financing and insurance payouts by facilitating consolidated information, credit scoring models, and yield forecasting models using satellite and weather data. Example: Digital applications are making crop insurance system faster and more accurate.

B. Introducing precision agriculture using data analytics, with an integrated agricultural data platform across all existing and new data sources (such as the 158.7 million Soil Health Cards dispatched). Based on pilots, this initiative could raise farm productivity by 15 to 20 percent. Example: Real-time agricultural data can help to increase yields and decrease costs.

C. Implementing online agricultural marketplaceslinked to a unified, nationwide market with a set of institutional market facilitators and common assaying and grading standards. Such e-marketplaces could cover 40 to 60 percent of agricultural produce sold in India, leading to 15 percent farmers’ price gains, as demonstrated by pilots. 

Together, these changes could add $50 billion to $70 billion of economic value in 2025. 

Example: Technology is bringing transparency to India’s agricultural markets

The Way Forward

Must Read: 

Can you answer these questions now?

  1. How feasible is the target to achieve the motive of doubling farmer’s income by 2022? Discuss.
  2. What are the steps that the government has taken in the last few years towards this objective?

Search now.....

Sign Up To Receive Regular Updates