Farmers to gain access to global markets as a policy to boost agricultural exports is on cards
Text Credit: Rochelle D’Souza Featured image source: i.pinimg.com
Farmers in the country can heave a sigh of relief after years of worry and woe as it seems like their fortunes are taking a turn for the better as the new minister coming into office seem to be finally prioritizing their needs. Taking charge of the commerce and industry portfolio, Minister Suresh Prabhu outlined his priority of working towards promoting agri exports and ensuring a global market for farmers.Prabhu, who took charge in office on Monday said that his ministry will work on developing the global supply chain for the agriculture sector. Once the new policy is in place, farmers will have all the right to access global markets and get better prices.
Addressing the 10th Agriculture Leadership Summit 2017 in Delhi, the minister pointed out that there is a need to work on doing away with trade restrictions in order to boost the country’s agri shipments. “We have right to have access to global markets for our farm produce by removing all trade restrictive practices,” he said adding all these measures would help increase farmers’ income.
He stated that his job as a commerce minister is to ensure that the development of a global supply chain and ensure farmer get better prices. Domestically, the ministry will work with its agri counterparts to develop agriculture parks in India. “If here are clusters for industry, why should we not think about clusters for different kinds of agriculture,” he said. Further, Prabhu informed that soon he would be meeting trade ministers in Manila, the Philippines, and Seoul, South Korea.
Talking about the World Trade Organisation (WTO), in an interview with Business Today he said the ministerial conference is in Argentina in December. “Our agenda is going to be very aggressive. This is a development round. We will like to make sure that Indian farmers get their due by getting a better price from global markets. This is very important and this is going to be part of the strategy to increase farmer’s income in India,” the minister said.
In 2016-17, export of agri products, such as cereals, processed fruit and vegetables, processed foods, and animal products, was around USD 16.27 billion, according to the data by Apeda.
The Narendra Modi-led government aims to double farmers’ income by 2022. Crop diversification, focus on allied sectors and food processing and tapping global markets are among the steps the government is taking to meet the target.Prabhu said the ministry will work on developing global supply chains for the sector. “We have to develop global supply chains and we are going to actually work on that,” he added. The commerce ministry, Prabhu said, will make sure that “we will achieve this goal to ensure that India’s agri sector will also be able to feed hundreds of others”.
When asked about the challenges being faced in the agricultural sector, he said land and water is limited but the population is growing and “we have a challenge to keep feeding”.”New challenge is climate change. It will have a huge negative impact on agriculture. How to keep feeding more people,” he said, adding the changing food habits are also going to be a big challenge and to address these “we have to have technologies and you need to think differently”.