Farm fund will drive innovation, improve livelihood, says ICAR chief

A dedicated fund will be created for farmers’ innovation, Trilochan Mohapatra, Secretary, Department of Agriculture Research and Education (DARE) and Director-General, Indian Council for Agriculture Research (ICAR), has said.

He was inaugurating the first Farmers’ Science Congress, held as part of the 107th Indian Science Congress, in Bengaluru, on Monday (January 6). Mohapatra said the ICAR had proposed the creation of such a fund to encourage farmers to innovate and create modern tools and systems of farming.

“We hope that some allocation will be made in the upcoming budget to create the farmers’ innovation fund. Even if the allocation is not made in the budget, we will create it from our own fund. Initially, a small amount will be allocated. After assessing the response of farmers, we will increase the allocation,” he told The Federal.

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The fund would be created under DARE. Without agricultural development, rural development cannot be achieved, he said.

Around 55 per cent of the country’s population is directly or indirectly connected to agriculture and, of this, 80 per cent are small and marginal farmers. It is because of them that we are able to reduce the import of pulses, he said.

“The production of pulses has gone up from 6 to 9 billion tonnes in recent years,” Mohapatra said.

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On the scope of organic farming, he said a total of 45 different organic farming system models were identified across the country and these were being used by a large number of farmers.

“The provisions of the Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY) are applied to all these models. The farmers can get subsidies under this scheme,” Mohapatra said.

Speaking at the event, Hanumana Gowda, Chairman, Karnataka Agriculture Price Commission, said the methods of doing agriculture had developed but farmers were still in poverty.

“The government says agriculture is developed. Then why is there so many farmer suicides? The challenges of mechanisation and marketing should be surmounted for the economic condition of farmers to improve,” he said.