Record production of food grains in India in 2016-17: Radha Mohan Singh

The Dollar Business Bureau

There has been a record output of food grains in the country in 2016-17 and all the earlier records were broken, said Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh on Friday.

“As per the 3rd Advance Estimates, food grain production India has increased to 273 MT, sugarcane to 306 MT oil seeds to 32.5 MT, in 2016-17,” said Singh, while addressing the National Agriculture Marketing Summit organised jointly by FICCI with the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare.

“As per the 2nd Advance Estimate, fruits and vegetable production has increased to 287 MT, he added.

On the goal of doubling income of farmers by 2022, the Minister said that only through cross-pollination of innovations and expertise, and thereafter collaboration during the implementation of programmes conceived, the goal set by the Government to double farmers’ income would be achieved.

Singh said that the Government is considering and taking measures to resolve the issue of post-harvest losses and fall in prices of agricultural products due to bumper crops.

“The Government is seized of the urgent requirement of strengthening market systems to reduce post-harvest losses to enable farmers to tide over both situations of bumper production leading to a glut and abrupt price fall and incidences of less production resulting in the availability of meagre marketable surplus,” he said. 

In order to address the limitations of current agricultural marketing system, Singh said that the Government has shared a corrective reform with the States.

“We have been able to move faster on this front in the last 2-3 years since the circulation of model APMC Act, 2003 to the states,” he said.

 He also informed that the model Agriculture Produce and Livestock Marketing (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2017 was released to the states on April 24, 2017, and has received a positive response regarding its adoption from all of them.

“My Ministry is seized with the consolidation of the Mandis integrated by way of total transition to online bidding and payments so that the envisaged benefits reach the farmers and traders both,” he said.