Odisha Cabinet Approves New Agriculture Policy

Bhubaneswar: The state cabinet on Tuesday gave in-principle approval to the new Agriculture Policy 2019 (Samridhi) of the Odisha government.

Briefing the media after the meeting which was presided over by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik at Lok Seva Bhawan here in the evening, chief secretary Asit Tripathy said the state government had given industry status to agriculture and launched the Agriculture Policy during 1996 with an aim to enhance it from the level of subsistence agriculture to a profitable, commercial venture so that the youths can accept it as a means for self-employment.

The Agriculture Policy was revised in 2008 and 2013 with wider scopes covering many aspects of the state’s agriculture.

“With Samridhi-Agriculture Policy 2019, Odisha is focused on farmers’ well-being. It has been formulated to build on the inherent strengths of its agriculture and allied sectors, to address the constraints it faces and to make optimal use of resources and opportunities emerging on account of advancement in technology, and the emergence of accelerated economic growth in the state and the country,” the chief secretary added.

The objectives of the new Agriculture Policy

—Ensuring continuous growth in farmers’ income
—Making the growth process inclusive of small and marginal farmers
—Ensuring sustainable, stable and scalable agricultural growth

To achieve agriculture vision of Odisha, the key components of Samridhi are designed as follows:

S: Leveraging Science and Technology
A: Adaptation to Climate change
M: Markets (Domestic and global), physical and financial, spot and future
R: Resource use efficiency ensuring higher productivity
I: Creating appropriate Infrastructure
D: Diversification of production to’ high-value agriculture
H: Human resource upgrading and skilling
I: Strengthening Institutions

Present at the press briefing, principal secretary, Agriculture, Sourabh Garg said that the new agriculture policy focuses on creating an ecosystem interlinking inputs-production-markets, sustainable increase in yields of paddy and diversification to high-value agriculture (HVA), encouraging efficient and ecologically sensitive use of inputs mainly water, land and soil , promoting processing which includes cleaning, grading, etc., for better value capture, creating value-chains particularly of vegetables, livestock: dairy and poultry, encouraging aggregation of farmers in farmer producer organisations (FPO), reducing wastage by promoting pre and post-harvest management, adapting to climate change – techniques, technology and management, leveraging the power of data for planning and monitoring, leveraging different central government schemes

“Besides, the policy has dealt some broad sections i.e., crop diversification, infrastructure, value-chains and processing, production and productivity, livestock and fisheries, research, development, extension, disaster management, insurance and areas with a special focus,” he pointed out.

Apart from this, the new policy also encompasses activities in different sectors of fisheries, livestock, procurement, credit, insurance and irrigation for boosting the overall farmers’ income, Garg added.