Budget Expectation 2024-25 : Susheel Kumar

“Indian agriculture which has grown at a healthy rate in the last couple of decades, now faces increasing challenges from erratic weather conditions and climate change. Besides higher allocation for infrastructure and irrigation the budget for 2024-25 should set the pathway for addressing the issue of promoting collaborative research of public institutions with private sector for development of newer climate resilient varieties and farm practices for the various agro-climatic zones in the country so that farmers can navigate through emerging challenges in coming years. Setting up a sustained mechanism to provide intellectual property protection for technology developers and investors would help farmers getting best technologies and varieties for boosting yield of several crops especially oilseeds, cotton and corn. Incentives schemes such production linked incentives (PLI) for agro chemical and allied sector, fiscal incentives for investment in the agricultural value chain for reducing the pre and post-harvest losses and support for introduction of technologies – digital soil and crop yield mapping, expanding the scope of usage of drones and promotion of hybrid seeds for paddy and other crops should be focus area for the budget. Income tax incentives like 200 percent weighted deduction would promote R&D in agriculture sector. The rationalization of GST rates on agrochemicals at par with other agri inputs would promote usage of quality crop protection products by farmers.”