Governor Ram Naik has asked for constant monitoring of government schemes in the agriculture sector to ascertain whether farmers were benefitting from these schemes. Naik advised that the government should regularly communicate with farmers and also seek their suggestions.
The Governor inaugurated a seminar on `Agriculture research and education in relation to development of integrated agriculture –challenge and solution' organized by UP Council of Agriculture Research on Wednesday.
``We often hold farmers responsible for poor state of agriculture and describe them as illiterate. Instead of criticizing them, the government should provide farmers with latest technology for development and increasing productivity," said Naik
"Six decades ago, India was a net importer of food grains. Today, India is self-reliant in food grains despite the fact that itss population has increased three times since independence and area under cultivation has decreased. UP is an important state and without development of agriculture sector the state and the country cannot grow,’’ Naik said.
The Governor asked agri-scientists to improve the pace of lab findings to the field so that farmers could benefit from new technology in the sector and increase income. He also asked the agri-scientists os the state Agriculture universities to focus on quality and productivity in agriculture.
"UP is on top in sugar and sugarcane production but the sugar recovery in UP is much lower than Maharashtra,’’ commented the Governor.
Agriculture minister Surya Prtap Shahi said that the total food grain production in UP in 2017 is estimated to be 5.5 crore metric tons. He said the wheat procurement by government agencies has immensely benefit the farmers as middlemen have been eliminated.
Shahi said that procurement also impacted the open market, fetching remunerative price of wheat to farmers. He said that government decision to directly purchase potato from farmers also impacted the open market thus ensuring good price to the growers.
The minister said the state government was also working on several proposals to increases the income of farmers which can be considerably hiked if post-harvest loss of agri-commodities could be prevented.
Shahi said that UP was on top in the country in production of wheat, milk, potato, sugarcane and sugar and for better marketing of these products, agriculture mandis were being linked through e-marketing portal.