Outlook India

Farm machinery maker CLAAS Managing Director Mrityunjaya Singh said: “Adoption of Model agricultural laws, agricultural credit availability of 15 lakh crore and allocation of 2.83 lakh crore will encourage farmers to adopt latest farming machinery and technology. This will upskill the farming sector in India.”

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India’s Budget 2020 arrives amidst official estimates that the country’s overall economy will grow at an 11-year-low of 5% and its agriculture and allied sector at 2.8%, 0.1 percentage point less than last year. Agriculture sustains 600 million Indians, half the country’s population, but generates 18% of the gross domestic product.

Could the window be closing on the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government’s promise to double farmers’ income and revamp the agricultural economy by 2022? We examine some official announcements and policies that significantly affect farmer earnings to find an answer – the draft seeds bill, income transfer scheme, minimum support price, farmer producer organisations and zero-budget natural farming.

The Times Of India

Farm markets need to be liberalised and the government is proposing to hand-hold farmers, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Saturday. Presenting the Budget for 2020-21, Sitharaman said the government is proposing a 16-point action plan to boost agriculture and farmers’ welfare. Sitharaman said agricultural services need copious investments, and added that the government has insured 6.11 crore farmers under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojna.

The Wire

While the broad consensus among economists was that the government needed to focus on putting money in the hands of those who are at the bottom of the pyramid, the 2020-21 budget has stayed away from making any such commitments.

The focus, in particular, had to be on providing a fillip to rural incomes as the current slowdown began in rural India, with rural wage growth showing a declining trend since 2014, and got particularly severe after demonetisation.

This is crucial too as the government has set itself the ambitious target of doubling farmers’ incomes by 2022 with 2015 as the reference year. But, even the first full budget of NDA 2 in July 2019, did not outline how this was ...

Economic Times

Farm leaders and outfits said that they were disappointed with no increase in PM Kisan pay-out to farmers and allocation kept at Rs 75,000 crore similar to the previous year in the Union Budget 2020-21 tabled in the Lok Sabha by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday.

The Hindu

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her Budget 2020 speech, has proposed a 16-point action plan to boost agriculture and farmers welfare, referring to it as a part of the “aspirational India” segment of the government’s three-pronged strategy for development.