Even as a deadlock persists involving farmers and the government more than the 3 farm laws, market body CII on Tuesday stated the stipulated agriculture advertising and marketing reforms definitely herald a new era for the farm sector and have taken care of a lot of the extended-standing difficulties.
“The reforms will create the right enabling environment for market and investment led agricultural growth, and increased income generation opportunities for farmers. The reforms will also give great impetus to investment in extension services to the farmers to further improve productivity and returns,” CII stated in a statement.
The current reforms, are component of bigger set of coordinated and complete initiatives that have been taken by the government, focused on the input side, introducing threat mitigation measures, minimizing post-harvest losses and augmenting marketplace and revenue possibilities for farmers, it stated.
“Given the need of the hour, the progressive agri marketing reforms aimed towards ‘Moving to One Nation, One Market’ are a significant step that will enable better access to markets, catalyse creation of primary processing infrastructure, improve access to technology and more importantly will help augment farmers’ incomes,” stated Uday Kotak, CII president.
Highlighting that the Centre has taken a quantity of initiatives like Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY), Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojna (PMFBY), PM Kisan SAMPADA Yojana, the chamber stated private sector has been partnering with farmers more than decades for enhancing production and productivity leveraging technologies, enhancing farmer capabilities by way of introduction of enhanced varieties. Private organizations also generating efforts for implementation of Good Agricultural Practices, offering marketplace linkages as nicely as farmer friendly post-harvest management options hence developing avenues for enhanced farmers’ incomes.
Demonstrating CII’s robust conviction that the measures will improve farmer incomes, it is piloting a capacity constructing and procurement facilitation programme covering 50 FPOs across 9 crop worth-chains, stated Sanjiv Puri, ITC CMD, who is also Chairman of CII National Council on Agriculture.
“CII believes the reform process initiated will help establish a competitive marketing ecosystem where farmers enjoy the freedom of choice relating to sale of agri produce through competitive alternative trading channels creating more income augmentation opportunities for farmers,” the statement stated.
“The agriculture reforms will enable better price discovery for farmers while creating a National Market for agriculture. While government has provided assurance that the MSP system will not be dismantled there is definitely an opportunity to increase farmer incomes significantly by diversification to high-value crops and livestock, the demand for which is increasing at three to five times that of cereals,” stated Ashok Gulati, co-chairman of CII National Council on Agriculture.