Maintaining that despite the COVID-19 pandemic, which has impacted almost all sectors in the last two year, agriculture was the least hit, the Economic Survey 2021-22 projected that the agriculture sector will grow by 3.9 percent in 21-22 after growing 3.6 per cent in the last year.
The Economic Survey report tabled in the Parliament on Monday said that the average monthly income per agricultural household in the country stood at Rs 10,218 in 2019 as against Rs 6,426 in 2014 while suggesting to to give priority to crop diversification, horticulture, allied farm sectors, alternative fertilisers like Nano urea and “higher access to institutional credit to farmers and greater participation of the private corporate sector”.
The Economic Survey also pitched for increasing agriculture research and development (R&D) and organic farming, besides use of new technologies like drones. “The share of the agriculture and allied sector in total Gross Value Added (GVA) of the economy has settled at around 18 per cent in the long term states the Survey. In the year 2021-22 it is 18.8 per cent and in the year 2020-21 it was 20.2 per cent. This has become possible due to good monsoon and various government measures to enhance credit availability, improve investments, create market facilities, promote infrastructure development in the agriculture sector and increase provision of quality inputs to the sector, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said presenting the survey.
According to the Situation Assessment Survey (SAS) report 2021, the average monthly income per agricultural household, as per paid out expenses approach, works out to be Rs 10,218, compared to Rs 6,426 as per the last SAS Report of 2014.
With increasing fragmentation of holdings, the Survey said there is also a need to improve productivity of small and marginal farmers through development and implementation of small holding farm technologies. However, crop diversification can be used as a tool to promote sustainable agriculture, reduction in import dependence and higher incomes for the farmers.
While the government has adopted the use of minimum support price (MSP) as a signal to encourage crop diversification, there is also a need for coordinated action from the state governments to facilitate the shift to high value and less water consuming crops to enable realisation of the objective of doubling farmers' income in a sustainable way, it added.
The agriculture credit flow for the year 2020-21 was Rs 15,75,398 crore against the target of Rs 15,00,000 crore for the year. The agriculture credit flow target for 2021-22 has been fixed at Rs 16,50,000 crore and till 30th September, 2021 against this target a sum of Rs 7,36,589.05 crore has been disbursed.
The report said that the government's fertiliser subsidy touched Rs 85,300 crore in the first nine months of the ongoing fiscal year and domestic fertiliser production reached 28.5 million tonnes during April-December period of 2021-22.