Small farmers top priority, says PM, transfers Rs 19.5k cr

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said small farmers are now being given utmost priority in the agricultural policies of the country as he disbursed over Rs 19,500 crore to more than 9.7 crore beneficiary farmer families under PM-Kisan, the Centre’s 'income support scheme.
The PM said the amount disbursed on Monday would help farmers in the ongoing sowing season and elaborated on how the corpus of Rs one lakh crore for the agriculture infrastructure fund would help in creating a suitable ecosystem of growth in the farm sector.
Noting that his government has made the “biggest ever purchase” from farmers at minimum support price (MSP), he said in an address through video-conferencing: “With this, about Rs 1,70,000 crore have reached directly into the accounts of rice farmers and about Rs 85,000 crore have gone directly into the account of wheat farmers.”
He also said India has reached among the top-10 countries of the world in terms of agricultural exports.
Mentioning that he urged the farmers to increase the production of pulses due to shortage a few years ago, the Prime Minister said that as a result, there has been an increase of almost 50% in the production of pulses in the country in the last 6 years.
Under the PM-Kisan scheme, a financial benefit of Rs 6,000 per year is provided to the eligible beneficiary farmer families in three equal instalments of Rs 2,000 each. The fund is transferred directly to the bank accounts of the beneficiaries. So far, Rs 1.38 lakh crore have been transferred to farmer families since the launch of the scheme in February, 2019.