PM spells out 4-point agenda to double farmers’ incomes

NEWDELHI:PRIME Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday proposed a four-pronged strategy to achieve his government’s key agrarian agenda of doubling farmers’ income: reducing cultivation costs, ensuring profitable prices, processing farm waste and creating non-farm sources of income.

The PM was addressing 300 policy planners, farmers, economists and bankers who gathered for a two-day conference organised by the agriculture ministry to suggest ways to increase farm income. Modi called for “hackathons” in Indian Institutes of Technology for out-of-the-box ideas in agriculture. “These really work, believe me. Their solutions have worked in other areas of governance.”

Soil health cards had cut the use of chemical fertilisers by 8-10%, while increasing productivity by 5-6%, Modi said. “Just like the entire country has pathology labs in the health sector, we could set up a network of soil-testing labs.” Modi said an entire economy could spring up around soil testing if agricultural BSC courses prepared students to be soil technologists. Such students could then set up labs with government subsidies, he said.

Modi sat through presentations around seven major themes made by aggregating proposals in the conclave that ended on Tuesday.

“Your recommendations will be analysed. Some may be implemented in a short term, while some will be implemented later. I desire to take these forward.”