Union Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister, Radha Mohan Singh today said that Agricultural Mechanization is one of the key drivers for sustainable development of agriculture sector. He said the systems helps in increasing production by timely farm operations, reduce losses, cost of operations by ensuring better management of costly inputs, enhances the productivity of natural resources and reduces drudgery associated with various farm operations. The Minister was addressing the Parliamentary Consultative Committee (PCC) meeting at Sher-e-Kashmir International Conference Centre (SKICC), here today, which was attended by over two dozen Parliamentarians from across the country.The objective of the Committee was to provide a forum for informal discussion between Members of Parliament, Ministers and senior officers of concerned departments which provides an opportunity to Government to benefit from the advice and guidance of the Members of Parliament for framing the Policy and implementation of programmes and schemes for the benefit and welfare of farming community, said the Minister. He said concentrated efforts are being made for promotion of agricultural mechanization through implementation of various schemes in the country. The participants discussed threadbare the ways and means for framing new policies for the development and promotion of Agriculture sector in the country.
Referring to utilization of farm power in Indian farms, the Union Minister stressed the need for increasing power availability to achieve higher productivity and profitability to the farmers. He said that agriculture sector has achieved record production of food grains, and by 2025, there will be a need to produce more than 300 Million Tonnes of food grains.Pointing out shortage of agricultural labour during peak seasons such as sowing and harvesting, Mr. Singh said that the agricultural mechanization sector needs to grow at faster rate to cater the needs. He said that more than Rs 3088 crore have been allocated to the State Governments for farm mechanization under various schemes during the last three year. During the current fiscal, the allocation for Sub-Mission on Agricultural Mechanization (SMAM) has been increased to Rs 577 crore, he said. Members of the Consultative Committee, Secretary, Joint Secretary, Additional Secretary and officers of Union and State Agriculture Ministries, Scientists of ICAR, besides officers of the Parliament Secretariat were present in the meeting.