Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government is coming out with a new Agriculture Policy soon. The Odisha Agriculture Policy 2019 will focus on high production, market linkage, and steady rise in farmers income.
The draft policy was discussed at a high level meeting chaired by chief secretary AP Padhi, where on Tuesday.
Presenting the draft policy state agriculture principal secretary Sourav Garg said that a new policy is now required as the dynamics of agriculture have been changed since the last policy was framed in 2013.
Garg said the vision of the draft policy was to harness Odisha’s agriculture potential in a sustainable manner and raise its farmers’ income continuously while ensuring nutritional security.
State development commission AK Tripathy, Agriculture Production Commissioner Gagan Dhal, water resources principal secretary PK Jena, principal secretary finance Ashok Meena, principal secretary women & child development Anu Garg Revenue secretary NB Dhal, agriculture director Muthukumar, agri-economist Sweta Saini, and Ankur Bansal of Transforming Governance(Samagra) discussed on the draft policy.
The chief secretary directed officials to create an ecosystem for flourishing of farmer producer groups and mobilising private investment in the sector. According to him the public investment in agriculture had reached Rs 17,000 crore in 2018-19.The Odisha government has taken pioneering steps like rolling out an exclusive budget for agriculture and forming a separate Agri-Cabinet. As a result, the state has become a surplus agri producer — producing 117 lakh MT of food grain in 2016-17 with 25 lakh MT rice surplus.
The state has achieved fastest growth rate in the country in enhancing monthly income of farmers between 2002-03 and 2015-16. During this period, the monthly average income has increased from Rs1062 to Rs7731 indicating an annual growth rate of 16.5% against national growth rate of 11.7%.
