Encourage sustainable agriculture

In a country where a large section of the population is engaged in agricultural activities, the government is ensuring that this primary sector is sustainable. To this effect, the country’s apex organisation of marketing cooperatives, NAFED, recently organised a workshop themed “Market Linkages to Cooperatives/Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs)/Farmer Groups” at NCUI Auditorium, New Delhi.

The workshop brought together all the stakeholders, including the authorities and senior officials from APEDA, INM, NCOF, representatives from Organic Farming Accreditation, certification and implementing agencies along with organic farming cultivators and farmers on one platform. The main objective of the gathering was to deliberate on various issues related to organic farming, including challenges, product certification and accreditation procedures, government policies and provisions under the Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY) and forward linkages to cultivators of organic farming.

The managing director of NAFED, Sanjeev Kumar Chaddha, emphasised the need for promoting organic farming and development of forward market linkages to make organic farming sustainable on a long-term basis. Dr AK Yadav, advisor from APEDA presented an overview of organic farming in the country while Reeva Abraham, AGM, APEDA, discussed the need and procedures for organic product certification and accreditation. Deepak Pandey from Suvidha dwelled upon the challenges being faced by the cultivators and farmers and deliberated on ways to overcome the same.

Dr Krishan Chandra, director, National Center for Organic Farming, informed that the Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY), launched in 2015 by the government, is an extended component of Soil Health Management (SHM) under the Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS) of National Mission on Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA) and aims at supporting and promoting organic farming for improvement of soil health.

Sharing details about the implementation procedure of the scheme, Chandra elaborated that the funding pattern under the scheme is in the ratio of 60:40 by the Central and state governments respectively. In case of Northeastern and Himalayan states, the Central assistance is provided in the ratio of 90:10 (centre: state) and for the Union Territories, the assistance is 100 per cent. He also added that the scheme had targeted to form 10,000 clusters of 20 hectares each and bring nearly two lakh hectares of agricultural area under organic farming by 2017-18.