AGRA, 27 December 2016 : Indian agriculture minister, Radha Mohan Singh has said that for the first time, Government has made provision to ascertain the sale of pulses on support price for the farmers.
Under this provision, wherever the market price of the pulses falls below the support price, the Government of India ascertain support price for the farmers.
Apart from this, the Government has also decided to maintain a buffer stock of pulses to the extent of 20 lakh tonne so that people could be provided pulses are reasonable prices when market prices escalate.
Singh briefed this in the closing ceremony of International Pulses Year, 2016 in Agra recently.
The General Assembly of United Nations had decided to celebrate the year 2016 as International Pulses Year to make the common people aware of the nutritional properties in pulses.
Singh said that Government has increased minimum support price of the pulses to promote the cultivation and production of pulses.
The Government of India has declared minimum support price for Arhar at $68.03 (Rs 4625), for black gram at $67.30 (Rs 4575) and for Moong at $66.19 (Rs 4500) which is the maximum support price till now.
The Government has also declared additional bonus for $0.36 (Rs 25) per quintal for pulses along with minimum support price.
Agriculture Minister said that the Government of India has taken a number of measures for International Pulses Year, 2016 to increase the production and productivity of pulse crops in the country.
For this purpose, the two Departments of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare and Indian Council of Agriculture Research and Agriculture have implemented an extensive course of action jointly under National Food Security Mission Project.
Under this scheme, Government of India has laid down a target of 20 million tonne production for the year 2016-17, 21 million tonne for year 2017-18 and 24 million tonne for year 2020-21.
Singh added that additional “breeder seed” production programmes have been launched with the cost of $2.99 million (Rs 20.39 crores) at Regional Centres of 10 Agricultural Universities with Indian Pulses Research Institute, Kanpur.
A target of 5801 quintal additional breeder seed production has been fixed in addition to 7561 quintal breeder seed being produced presently by the Centres by 2018-19 apart from 3717 quintal additional breeder seed by 2016-17 by these Centres.
Singh said that these steps have been taken to strengthen the formal seed mechanism of pulse crops and to increase availability of seeds of improved varieties in the country.
Singh said that “pulse seed hubs” are being established in State Agriculture Universities, Institutes of the Council and Agriculture Scientific Centres of major pulse producing States of the country.
A target has been fixed to establish a total of 150 “Pulse Seed Hubs” from 2016-17 for increasing the availability of quality seeds for which a provision of $33.09 million (Rs 225.31 crores) has been made. Under this project, there is a target of 150,000 quintal additional seed production per year. Each “Pulse Seed Hub” will produce a minimum of 1000 quintal quality seeds of pulse crops per year and supply it.
Singh praised the efforts of all the farmers, scientists and policy makers for increasing production and productivity/ availability of pulses in the country and hoped that they would put in their best efforts to make India self sufficient in pulses production.