The federal government will arrange an accelerator fund for agri-startups to extend digital infrastructure within the rural areas and increase startups on this area, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman introduced in her Finances speech on Wednesday.
The fund will work in the direction of implementing cost-effective options to handle the varied challenges confronted by farmers by introducing cutting-edge applied sciences and growing output. The minister mentioned the Agriculture Accelerator Fund is a part of inclusive growth, a key precedence of the Modi-led authorities.
The minister additionally proposed organising digital public infrastructure for the agriculture sector that can be constructed as open supply, open normal and interoperable public good that can assist develop farmer-centric resolution for crop planning.
She added that agriculture credit score goal has been elevated to ₹20 lakh crore for 2024, with give attention to animal husbandry, dairy and fisheries. The federal government has additionally launched the Nationwide Monetisation Pipeline with an funding potential of ₹9 lakh crore.
The Financial Survey, tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, mentioned that agriculture has carried out nicely however the sector wants “re-orientation” to beat challenges like opposed impacts of local weather change, rising enter value, and so on. In keeping with the Survey, India’s agriculture sector, which accounts for almost 15% of the nation’s GDP and is the biggest supplier of employment, has seen resilient progress regardless of Covid-19 shocks, increasing 4.6% on common prior to now six years .
In recent times, India has additionally quickly emerged as the web exporter of agricultural merchandise. The sector grew 3% in 2021-22 in comparison with 3.3% in 2020-21, the survey said. India has emerged as a internet exporter of farm merchandise, with abroad shipments in 2021-22 touching a document $50.2 billion. Throughout 2021-22, agricultural exports reached a whopping $50.2 billion, it added.
The federal government will even assist Hyderabad-based Millet Institute as a centre of excellence, the minister mentioned. Earlier, the United Nations declared 2023 because the Worldwide Yr of Millets, with an goal to create consciousness and improve manufacturing and consumption of the grain.
“Digitization of agriculture is one method to scale back the local weather influence of farming in addition to the influence of looming financial slowdown in sure areas. We anticipate enterprises and governments all over the world together with India to speed up expertise investments in agriculture – leveraging developments in cloud computing, IoT, drones, distant sensing, information, and AI/ML fashions – to assist the sector unlock new potentialities whereas fixing real-world agricultural issues,“ mentioned Krishna Kumar, co-founder and CEO of Cropin Expertise Options.
This will considerably increase meals manufacturing, enhance profitability and scale back operational prices that are essential in a downturn, he mentioned.
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Supply: Live Mint