Odisha government has decided to roll out a new state Agriculture Policy 2019, official sources said recently. “The state government has initiated steps to bring out an updated and dynamic agricultural policy keeping in tune with the changing conditions of agriculture and agricultural market,” Chief Secretary A P Padhi said after chairing a high-level meeting for the purpose.
Padhi asked the Agriculture and Farmer Empowerment department to focus on enhancing farmers’ income through appropriate production and marketing strategies. He said the new policy should help create ecosystem for flourishing of farmer producer groups and mobilising private investment in the sector.
“The departments were asked to give their inputs for further development of the draft policy within two weeks,” Padhi said while Development Commissioner A K Tripathy opined that the policy should be oriented towards crop diversification, value addition and market linkages.
Agriculture Production Commissioner GK Dhal suggested that calamity resilient seeds and agricultural practices be developed. The general observation at the meeting concluded that Odisha has made unprecedented progress in agriculture and allied sector through concerted interventions of the government.
Public investment in agriculture has reached Rs 17,000 crore in 2018-19 and Odisha has taken pioneering steps like rolling out an exclusive budget for agriculture and formation of separate Agri-Cabinet, said Agriculture and Farmers Empowerment secretary Sourav Garg. Garg said the state has become a surplus producer of food grains by producing 117 lakh MT of food grain in 2016-17.
