The national target of food grain production in 2024-25 will be 341.55 million tonnes : Shri Chouhan

New Delhi:1910/24: To review and assess the crop performance during the preceding crop seasons and fix crop-wise targets for rabi season, the Union Minister of Agriculture, Shri Shivraj Singh Chouhan inaugurated National Conference on Agriculture for Rabi Campaign 2024 at NASC Complex, New Delhi. The conference aimed to promote discussions among all stakeholders about innovative agricultural practices and digital initiatives to ensure smooth supply of essential Agri-inputs and support the adoption of state-of-the-art technologies, thereby enhancing crop production and productivity.

Addressing the Conference, Shri Shivraj Singh Chouhan said, “We need to move towards organic and natural farming to increase productivity and reduce dependency on chemicals and fertilizers. The aim is to increase per hectare yield while reducing the cost of production and offering genuine prices to the farmers.” A committee has been constituted to reduce the cost of transportation to reduce the gap between the procurement and sale prices. The States in collaboration with the Centre need to work on increasing production based on Agro-climatic conditions to make India the largest food basket in the world. The national target for food grain production in 2024-25 will be 341.55 million tonnes. He assured that the government of India would work collaboratively on every suggestion the ministers and state representatives gave.

At the conference, Shri Ramnath Thakur, Minister of State (Agriculture) requested the States to take immediate action to help farmers affected by crop damage due to floods and cyclones. The Senior Officers and Researchers need to assess the quality of Agri-inputs circulated in the market.

The Minister of State (Agriculture), Shri Bhagirath Choudhary expressed his gratitude to research organizations for continuously working towards making the country self-reliant in production of pulses and oilseeds.The conference welcomed esteemed panelists from State Governments for interactive sessions on crucial topics covering enhancing productivity of oilseeds and pulses, clean plant programme, digital platforms like National Pest Surveillance System (NPSS) and Integrated Pesticide Management System (IPMS), DPIs under Digital Agriculture Mission and Seed Authentication, Traceability & Holistic Inventory (SATHI) portal.

In the session on Digital Agriculture, the panelists deliberated on recently approved Digital Agriculture Mission, an umbrella scheme to support various Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) initiatives for Agriculture and Special Centre Assistance to States for Capital Investment. The Mission focuses on enabling a convergent DPI ecosystem that enables farmer-centric solutions using integrated registries through AgriStack and providing various advisories through Krishi Decision Support System.

The panelists also discussed on the need for regulations to ensure import of disease-free planting materials in case of fruits and orchids. The Clean Plant Programme will work to resolve such issues and produce, maintain and distribute pathogen-tested propagative material using therapeutic processes to clean plants.

While responding on various sessions in Conference, the state representatives have responded the following (a)for Agriculture, holistic approach needs to be adopted, (b) Mechanization  is needed for  Oilseeds and Pulses, Good Quality seeds are required, (c) Private sector be encouraged to Research (d) Specialized project from ICAR (e) For CPP, attention on soil is required and support to private sector is welcome (f) For IPMS, AI Chatbot/advisory would be more efficient if it is in audio form.

Addressing the Conference, Dr. Devesh Chaturvedi, Secretary Agriculture instructed the States to ensure completion of farmer registry for all farmers in the State by 31^st March 2025 in camp mode to enable farmers to avail benefit of PM-KISAN. He also highlighted on the need for increasing the productivity of oilseeds and pulses. A check needs to be placed on overdosing of pesticides, circulation of spurious pesticides and seeds in the market. He urged States to ensure use of applications like NPSS, IPMS and SATHI and spread awareness in their respective States.

Sh. Rajat Kumar Mishra, Secretary Fertilizer emphasized on use of drones for nano urea and crop monitoring. Dr. Himanshu Pathak, Secretary (DARE) and DG (ICAR) requested States to increase use of bio-fortified seeds, use of new variety and climate resilient seeds and seed replacement for increasing the productivity.

This was followed by an interaction session with Hon’ble Ministers and Senior Officers of the States to raise issues concerning their states for increasing area coverage, yield, production and productivity in their States. The Agriculture Ministers from States raised their issues in relation to farmers and requested the Government of India to work on resolution. They also made some suggestions for betterment of agriculture and farmers.

The Conference had participation from various Ministries, representatives from State Governments / Union Territories and other organizations. Through interactive sessions, the conference facilitated a comprehensive dialogue that would lead to actionable strategies for the upcoming rabi season.