Why in news?
Union budget has announced new proposals for enhancing the farmers’ income.
What are the practical problems faced by the farmers?
- Over 70 per cent of the farmers in India seldom receive the MSPs for want of official market intervention.
- These prices are effective only for wheat and rice and, occasionally, for a couple of other crops in a handful of states, elsewhere, the procurement infrastructure does not exist.
- Recently announced MSP formula does not address the demands by the farmers as MSPs for many crops are already higher than 1.5 times the paid-out costs and the estimated value of family labour.
- Small and marginal farmers are unable to transact at the markets run by the agricultural produce marketing committees (APMCs).
What are the announcement in the budget for farmers?
- Union budget has announced MSPs at 50 per cent above the production cost. Click here to know more about MSP formula
- The National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog will figure out the status about reach of MSP to the farmers.
- The budget proposes to launch “Operation Greens”, on the pattern of the milk sector’s “Operation Flood”.
- This operations will be used for the marketing of highly perishable commodities, such as tomato, onions, potato and others, which witness vicious price fluctuations.
- Budget proposes to create parallel marketing infrastructure by upgrading the existing 22,000 rural haats into gramin agricultural markets.
- These mandis will be exempted from the APMC regulations to facilitate direct sale to consumers and bulk purchasers.
- It also encourage farmer producer companies and cooperatives by fully exempting their profits from income tax.
- Budget seeks to promote agriculture’s allied activities like animal husbandry and fisheries, which are more lucrative than crop farming.
- Budget has also proposes to provide a Kisan Credit Card-like facility to those engaged in these ventures.
Source: Business Standard
