Top Government Policies to double Farmers's Income by 2022

Here are the Several Government Initiatives to double Farmers Income by 2022 :

"We are working towards ensuring that the incomes of our hardworking farmers doubles by 2022. For that we are facilitating proper assistance wherever required. We have faith in the farmers of India," -PM Narendra Modi Ji

In the agrarian country like India, 70% of its population directly or indirectly depends upon agriculture. It has 159.7 million hectares (394.6 million acres)  of arable land and is the second largest in the world.It has around 118.7 million farmers and cultivators and 144.3 million agricultural labours (according to 2011 census report).This is how you can imagine the broad size of Indian agricultural market.

In such a agriculture ecosystem, average agriculture household income was Rs 8,931 per month in 2016-17 with an increment of just Rs 2,505 per month in last four years. This picture shows the critical condition of Indian agriculture. So many of the small or marginal farmers were unable to fulfil their basic needs. 

Now the government inspected about this poor condition of farmers and analysed the cause of this problem to find the best possible solution . The govt focused on following areas to increase the farmers income atleast double by 2022.

• To reduce the input cost for farming .This includes the raw material like Seeds, Fertilisers, Machinery rent, Pesticides.
• To provide them the reasonable price of their produce
• To reduce the Post harvest losses .This includes losses during Handling, Packing, Transportation, Storage
• To avail the easy loans to farmers at low interest rate.
•  To provide proper Crop Insurance facility against any natural calamity, crop disease with a very less premium amount.

Based upon the above goals, the Indian Government launched various Schemes for the Farmers as described below:

#1    PRADHAN MANTRI FASAL BIMA YOJANA

The Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojna was launched on 18th February 2016 by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. It is basically a Crop Insurance scheme that eliminates all the weaknesses of other type of schemes.

Objectives :

1.  To provide insurance coverage in case of the failure of crops due to natural calamity, crops disease, pests .

2.  To stabilise the Farmers income.

3.  To encourage farmers to adopt innovative agricultural practices.

4.  To ensure flow of credit to the agriculture sector.

Highlights :

1. The crops will be insured and the farmers have to pay a subsidized amount of premium

       2 %  for Kharif crops

       1.5% for Rabi crops

       5 % for Horticulture crops

And rest of the premium will be paid by the government.

2. The farmers are highly encouraged to adopt the modern agricultural practices in place of traditional practices.Smart phones will be used to capture and upload data of crop cutting to reduce the delays in claim payment to farmers. 

3. It is a One nation One scheme, so it is applicable in whole of the nation in a similar way.

#2  KUSUM YOJANA

KUSUM( Kisan Urja Surksha Utthan Mahaabhiyan) scheme was launched in Feb 2018. This scheme promotes the solar power production in the fields for extracting ground water for the irrigation purposes and to generate the power for the other processes as well .

Highlights:

1.The central government is going to provide 60% of the total expense as subsidy .In addition to this 30% amount will be provided by the banks as loan.

2.The farmers can adopt the solar farm practices on their fields by investing just 10% of the total amount of the project.

3.The farmers can also supply the excess and remaining power to the grid .For this, they will be paid.So it may act as the source of their extra income.

4.17.5 Lakh solar pumps will be provided by the government to the interested farmers.

5.The government not only aimed to increase the farmers income but also focused on to decrease the pollution level . As the solar pumps doesn't create pollution while the diesel pumps creates a large amount of air pollution.

#3  PRADHAN MANTRI KISAN SAMPADA YOJANA

SAMPADA(Scheme for Agro-Marine Processing and Development of Agro-Processing Clusters) scheme was launched on may 2017 and renamed as Pradhan mantri kisan sampada yojana. It is a government initiative to provide some financial assistance to the farmers for the purpose to accomplish the target of doubling income by 2022.

Objectives:

1. This scheme primarily emphasizes on reducing the level of post harvest losses.

2. It encourages the small or marginal farmers to adopt better quality raw material for the crop production.

3. It allows the farmers to implement advanced machinery technology in their fields so as to reduce their cost of production and to increase their income.

4. It generally focuses on improvising the credit flow in agricultural sector.

Highlights:

1. The sum of ₹6000 will be credited to farmers bank account.

2. The amount will be transferred in three stages. In each stages ₹2000 will be credited to their account.

3. This scheme includes only small and marginal farmers who have only 2 hectares or less piece of land of their own.

4. The amount will be credited directly on the farmers bank account to avoid the risk of not reaching the amount to farmers.

5. PM Kisan SAMPADA Yojana is expected to leverage investment of Rs. 31,400 crore for handling of 334 lakh MT agro-produce valued at Rs. 1,04,125 crore, benefiting 20 lakh farmers and generating 5,30,500 direct/indirect employment in the country by the year 2019-20.

#4  GOBAR-DHAN SCHEME

GOBAR (Galvanizing Organic Bio-Agro Resources) - DHAN scheme was was announced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his 2018 budget.  The scheme emphasizes on managing the animal and plant waste like cow dung, ashes, plant residues etc and reuse them to make compost, vermicompost , bio-gas and bio-CNG.

Highlights:

1. This scheme basically teach our farmers for correct use of the farm and animal wastage so as to get maximum gain from it.

2. To encourage them to use the agricultural wastes to form organic manure and to implement organic farming in their field.

3. To form gobar gas and utilize it for the cooking purposes  

4. To increase additional income for farmers as they are using only the wastes for income generation which doesn't requires any expensive raw material.

#5  SOIL HEALTH CARD SCHEME

Soil Health Card Scheme is a scheme launched by the Government of India in 19 February 2015.An amount of ₹568 crore (US$79 million) was allocated by the government for the scheme. With the implementation of this scheme, the farmers would be able to understand about the nutrient contents present in their soil. 

Objectives:

1. To inform the farmers about the strengths and weaknesses of the soil.

2. To reduce excess amount of fertilizers to be used in the soil by the farmers.

3. To allow them the best crop selection that is expected to give more yield.

Highlights:

1. The soil health card will be issued to all farmers containing the detailed description of the content present in the soil.

2. The soil testing laboratories will be opened across different parts of the country. The farmers are required to bring the soil sample from their field. The experts will test the soil and prepare the soil health card report.

3. The report contains the nutrient content,moisture content present in the soil, the actual condition of the soil and the measures to improve the defects of the soil.

4. New soil health card will be issued after every 3 years, as the soil properties changes after each years.

5. After implementing this scheme, the fertiliser consumption decreased by 8-10% while the crop yield increased by 5-6%.