Aiming at giving a new direction to the State’s agricultural economy, the Punjab Government has set up a high-level task force under the chairmanship of Punjab Farmers’ Commission chairman Dr GS Kalkat.
Dr Kalkat will head a high-level panel of senior IAS officers, progressive farmers, agricultural experts, sociologists and others to prepare a draft to restructure State’s agriculture, said an official spokesperson of the State Agriculture Fepartment.
The task force would address various problems faced by the agriculture sector in the state including rising number of farmer suicides, increasing input costs, falling water table, increasing use of chemicals to maintain production level, saturation in productivity, attendant environmental issues and several other reasons.
Spokesperson said that the first meeting would be held during the first week of July 2015 with various departments in this regard. He said that the newly set up NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India) had directed the state government to set up a task force for preparing a detailed note on agriculture. Another task force is to be constituted for preparing a policy paper on poverty alleviation.
Punjab Government has nominated five progressive farmers from the state in the task force constituted for the overall development and the growth of Agriculture sector.
Among the five progressive farmers nominated for the task force included Kuldeep Singh Brar from Sri Muktsar Sahib, Kulwant Singh from Hoshiarpur, Ajay Jakhar from Abohar, Vikram Ahuja from Fazilka and Sandeep Randhawa from Batala.