Govt taking steps to fix post-production challenges in agri sector: Tomar

Tomar said govt has connected about 1,000 regulated wholesale mandis with electronic National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) so far and sanctioned Rs 9,500 cr for 13,000 projects under the Agri-Infra Fund

Post-production in the agriculture sector is definitely a challenge and the government has taken many steps to build necessary infrastructure to address this issue by setting up of eNAM and other facilities, Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said on Wednesday.

To address the post-production challenges, Tomar said the government has connected about 1,000 regulated wholesale mandis with electronic National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) so far, sanctioned Rs 9,500 crore for 13,000 projects under the Agri-Infra Fund, and encouraging setting up of farmer producer organisations (FPOs) besides promoting technologies like drones.

"Not production, but post production is definitely a problem today," Tomar said addressing a conference on 'Getting Agriculture Markets right' organised jointly by National Stock Exchange and ICRIER.

Tomar also mentioned that efforts to address the post-production issues were made from time to time in the past but desired results could not be achieved.

However, in the last eight years, several steps have been taken to fix the post-production issues so that farmers get better prices and their income improves, he said.

He also said that there is a good market for organic products as their exports have risen. But farmers need to work on improving the quality and productivity to get better rates.

ICRIER Chairman Pramod Bhasin, National Stock Exchange Managing Director and CEO Vikram Limaye, Professor Ashok Gulati, Infosys Chair of Agriculture at ICRIER were present at the event.