The Agriculture Cabinet Committee, at its first meeting held at the Secretariat on Thursday, directed departments like Planning and Convergence, Finance, Agriculture and Famers’ Empowerment and other allied departments to enhance outlay of the Agriculture Budget o be presented in the upcoming Budget Session of the Assembly.
The committee presided over by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik also directed the departments to bring about convergence in their activities, programmes and schemes. “The focus area of the Agriculture Budget will be to increase the area under irrigation and reduce the gap between the irrigation potential available in the State and the actual area brought under irrigation so far,” the Chief Minister said.
He said the Budget will also focus on reducing farmers’ vulnerabilities to natural calamities, provision of credit and agriculture inputs in time, improving agriculture production and productivity by laying emphasis on modern farm technologies and development of Fisheries and Animal Husbandry sector.
Emphasis will also be given on marketing of agriculture produce and creation of storage and Warehousing facilities for better post-harvest manag-ement of agriculture produce.