AIR Spotlight is an insightful program featured daily on the All India Radio Newsonair. In this program, many eminent panellists discuss issues of importance which can be quite helpful in IAS exam preparation. In this article, India’s record food grain production and food security is discussed.
Participants:
- J P Mishra, Agriculture expert
- Nidhendra Dev, Journalist
Record agricultural production:
- Indian agricultural sector has been recording historically high levels of agricultural production. The growth rate in the last four to five years has been noticeably high. India has been maintaining an increasing trend in food grain production since 2015-16. Total food grain production has increased by 25% in the last 6 years from 251.54 to 316.01 million tonnes.
- This is all the more significant given that the COVID-19 pandemic had caused wide disruptions in movement of agricultural inputs, labour as well as marketing of produce.
- There is an even higher target for the upcoming year. The government has announced a foodgrain production target of 328 million tonnes for 2022-23. The target was announced at the National Conference on Agriculture: Kharif Campaign 2022.
- Of the 328 million foodgrain production target fixed for 2022-23, kharif foodgrain production target has been fixed at 163.15 million tonnes, while rabi foodgrain production target has been kept at 164.85 million tonnes.
Strategy adopted:
- Increasing cropping area and inter cropping
- Focus on increasing productivity
- Crop diversification
- Policy decisions like Minimum Support Price and technological support from the government and associated organizations are incentivizing agriculture sector production.
Significance of increasing agri production:
- Food security for India.
- The record agri production will provide an impetus to agri exports from India which will, in turn, help earn foreign exchange for India while also helping increase farmers’ incomes.
Recommendations for further increasing production:
- Focus on increasing production in crops such as pulses and oilseeds (edible oil), which will help ensure self-reliance in these critical crops.
- Focus on sustainable agricultural production by further mainstreaming schemes like soil health card scheme and Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana. This will ensure not only environmental but also economical sustainability of the agricultural production process by ensuring appropriate use of chemicals and water in the agricultural production process.
- Address the issue of land fragmentation in Indian agricultural sector to provide an impetus to land productivity. Given the reluctance to land pooling, alternatively, Farmer Producer Organizations should be promoted.
- To ensure better forward linkages, the marketing of agricultural produce should be strengthened further. This will provide farmers with the much-needed confidence to undertake agricultural production.
Read more Gist of AIR Spotlight here.
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