LOAN WAIVERS ALONE CAN’T SOLVE FARMER WORRIES: AGRI MINISTER

Minister says need to focus on bringing down farm input costs

RADHA MOHAN SINGH, Agriculture minister

NEWDELHI: The Narendra Modi government has set an ambitious target of doubling farm income by 2022 — the 75th year of the country’s Independence. With farmer suicides continuing to haunt the country, agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh told HT’s Kumar

Uttam that loan waivers alone cannot solve farmers’ problem and focus should be on bringing down input cost of farming and providing market to farmers. Excerpts from an interview. Your government has promised to double the income of farmers by 2022. How do you plan to achieve that? About 48% of India’s population is engaged in agriculture. 22.5% of the farming community is below the poverty line. Farming has to be made productive and profitable. We need to decrease input cost, increase production and ensure proper remuneration. Farmers need to be insulated from situations such as natural calamity and bad crop through insurance. Has your government been able to improve the condition of farmers in the last three years? Certainly, situation ing. Credit for sho crop loan — at c sional rate — h increased fro lakh crore in 2014-15 to ~10 l crore for 2017A record outp 273 million me tones of foodgr and 287 mmts o fruits and ve has bee in 2 M production has also been at a record level. All this was possible because of a methodical planning of schemes and their proper and timely execution. But, we have a long way to go. But, the non availability of market and proper remuneration remain a matter of concern. How is the government dealing with it? We are committed to creating a unified national agriculture t. The Prime Minister -NAM in April last As against the tarf 400, as many as arkets have ady joined this form across 13 es and Union rritories. 18 lakh tonnes arious comdities, valued 19,196 crore, traded on the platform. We have a target to reach a total of 585 markets by March 2018. Does the Centre have any plan to replicate a UPlike farm loan waiver at the national level? It is a decision of the Yogi Adityanath government. We do not have any such plan at the national level. Why is the Centre averse to funding farm loan waiver nationally? Farm loan waivers alone cannot solve problems of farmers in the long run. On the one hand, you spend crore of rupees on waiving off loans and on the other you have 99 big and small irrigation projects pending for want of resources. Can such a situation be appreciated? We need to build capacity, make agriculture remunerative and provide market to farmers. Farmers need cheap credit in time, so as it can invest it properly and get good return. That will serve the cause much better than farm loan waiver.