Centre forms panel to work for doubling farmers' income

The Centre has constituted a committee to achieve the target of doubling the income of farmers by March 2022, Parshottam Rupala, Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, told the Lok sabha on Tuesday.

In a written reply to a question, he also informed that a survey finding could not establish any significant adverse effect of demonetisation on input availability, market arrivals of produce and area sown in the Rabi season.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, to understand the impact of demonetisation on the farming sector, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and the National Institute of Agricultural Economics and Policy Research (NIAP) conducted a short survey of farmers in some villages around Delhi under "Mera Gaon Mera Gaurav" (MGMG) initiative. 

"As per preliminary reports received from the states, the total area sown under Rabi crops as on January 27, 2017 stood at 637.34 lakh hectares as compared to 600.02 lakh hectares in the corresponding period last year, indicating no significant impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing," said a ministry statement.

"In order to achieve the target of doubling of income of farmers by March 2022, the Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare has constituted a Committee under the chairmanship of its Additional Secretary," it added.

The function of the committee would be to study the current income level of farmers and agricultural labourers, to measure the historical growth rate of the current income level, to determine the needed growth rate to double the income of farmers/ agricultural labourers by the year 2021-22 and to consider and recommend various strategies to be adopted.

It would recommend an institutional mechanism to review and monitor implementation to realise the goal and to examine any other related issues.