Agri Vision from the Spectacles of Budget 2020

The agriculture sector is always crucial in every year’s financial budget. In the present financial budget it has largely focused on agricultural issues especially the agriculture market, doubling farmers’ income and doubling agriculture export, etc. As the Modi government has an ambitious target of doubling farmer’s income and doubling agriculture exports and to make it reality Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed a 16-point action plan in this year’s Budget. The present budget will largely affect agriculture economy and would promote Agri start-up ecosystems as finding an international market for agriculture products and getting a good price for the Agro-product is the only solution to reduce farmer’s distress. The following is the action plan for agriculture in the financial budget.

1. This budget of 2020 has dealt with various farmers distress issues such as the budget has proposed comprehensive measures to relieve 100 water-stressed districts. 20 lakh solar aided pumps along with 15 lakh farmers with barren lands for the irrigation will substantiate the reduction of carbon footprints and strengthen the infrastructure base of farming.
2. It promotes zero-based natural farming and encourages using of traditional/ organic fertilizers. This will improve the quality of food along with meeting the food standards that make it eligible for exports.
3. NABARD will geo-tag 162 mt tones of cold storage and warehousing. The proposal to map and geo-tag the warehouses will surely go a long way in spreading the scarce financial resources efficiently apart from creating marketing intelligence.
4. In the dairy, livestock and fisheries sectors there are some appreciable targets set such as doubling the capacity of processing milk for making safe milk available to a greater number of people, to free the livestock of diseases by 2025 which have been resulting in lower productivity, enhancing the fish productivity and promoting the FPOs will boost the blue economy and all these steps will result in substantial growth in these sectors which are important contributors of the agriculture economy as a whole.
5. The access to markets in a timely and affordable manner will steer towards raising farmers’ income and to achieve this “Kisan Rail” will be set up for transporting perishable goods through refrigerated coaches. It will make the movement of agriculture goods faster to the markets and prevent the wastage of food. On similar grounds, “Kirishi Udann” scheme is launched on national and international routes for transportation by air. This will help to boost agricultural exports.
6. States involving in promoting “One district One produce” scheme as every district of India has some unique product that can have an international market.
7. Village storage scheme run by self-help groups is being processed. Since agriculture produce is perishable hence good storage facility is inevitable in the agriculture sector. Further expansion of Self Helps Groups under Deendayal Anthodaya Yojana will infuse right morale into the agriculture sector.
8. The long pending structural reforms such as land leasing have been encouraged by the Centre and the draft model laws have been circulated among the States for their consideration. These Pro-Farmer legislations have been supported by National Commission on farmers, Committee on Doubling Farmers’ Income, NITI Aayog and many such think tanks.

There are always high hopes in the budget for agriculture as a 70% population of our country is directly and indirectly, dependent on agriculture. Indian economy moves as per the directions of this 70% people in the country. Hence every year’s budget, agricultural budget is having prime importance. This agricultural budget has rightly strategized providing a definitive path through its 16 well thought out action points. The thought process in the present agriculture budget has tremendous change making potential and this is definitely achievable with the positive involvement by the States in implementing the Centre’s actions plan which will eventually achieve its target in sustainably doubling farmer’s income and doubling of agriculture exports.