Improve Productivity at Lower Cost with Group Farming: Tomar at ASSOCHAM National Conference

The National Conference on Enhancing Agricultural Productivity: Integration of Improved Seeds and Agri Inputs organized by ASSOCHAM took place today at the NDMC Convention Centre, New Delhi with Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, Narendra Singh Tomar, who joined the conference virtually, as the chief guest.

While addressing the conference, Tomar said, “The stronger and more profitable the agriculture sector is, the stronger the country will be. There is a need to consider the challenges facing Agriculture today. In spite of all the favorable conditions, the area under farming and its profit and loss depend a lot on nature. People's curiosity and attachment towards agriculture should increase, agriculture should be attractive for the next generation and farmers can be retained for farming, more work needs to be done in this direction.”

While speaking about the role of FPOs in scaling up farmers’ income, he said, “The number of small farmers in the country is more, who have small acreage and do not have money for investment; for such farmers, the Central Government is setting up 10,000 new FPOs, for which a provision of Rs 6,865 crore has been made and small farmers are being mobilized. It is the effort of the government that farmers should do group farming so that the input costs can be reduced, production quality improves, and small farmers can shift to remunerative crops and get the price for their produce on their own terms. FPOs can also process products. For this, the government has extended loans up to Rs. 2 crores without guarantee.”

The vision of the conclave was to create awareness for improved farm inputs and with that in mind, ASSOCHAM invited some of the most prominent personalities of the agriculture sector including R K Trivedi, Executive Director of, national Seed Association of India who shared his views about the importance of seeds as an improved farming input, at the conference, D S Rajora, Assistant Secretary General, ASSOCHAM who delivered the welcome address, and Shakti Singh Shekhawat, Associate Director, Nangia Andersen LLP.

Dr. P.K. Singh, Agriculture Commissioner, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Govt. of India said, “We are entering the Amrit Kaal where our country has such a huge population to feed. We are on a mission to provide nutritious food to even the last leg of society, and we will try to find a way to do so without damaging the environment. Farmers will be heading this mission, and sustainability and profitability will be our motto. Currently, we are promoting organic farming to sustain the environment and to make sure we are leaving behind enough food for the next generation to thrive on.”

Sagar Kaushik, President- of Global Corporate & Industry Affairs, UPL was one of the key speakers for the first session of the day with the theme ‘Upstreaming Quality Farming Inputs: Easing the Resource Use Efficiency and Associability of Farmers. While talking about IPL’s participation in the subject of the conference, he said, “UPL is one of the leading companies in the agriculture section and we have a lot of innovative solutions that cover crop health and crop production. We also have a lot of agricultural technologies to support the farmers in our Agri supply chain. To make these technologies affordable, through digitalization, we are making sure farmers can participate in the shared services and we are also ensuring that these services are equally available to all sections of agriculture from marginal to commercial farmers.”