Krishi Vikas Summit
Shri Omprakash started his speech with detailing his years of service towards farmers development where he travelled at India level before taking responsibilities as Ministry of Agriculture, Haryana, He also emphasis that he born in house of farmer, lived in village and spent his life till 10th in village and thereby understand farmer and issues related.
He is really happy to accept invitation of ET for ET Krishi Vikas Summit 2015 as he observed that dying of one farmer is big news in media then lakhs of people(dying), He appreciate ET also doing something on Farmer and Channel like Kisan Channel is there and now green tv is coming into the picture.
He emphasis that we are good in fertilizer(produce/export), production is good but warehousing is issue. Being Production is good major part of Agriculture is good but producer(farmer) is in problem. Produced(related to storage) is in bad shape.
Market, Govt Policies, Peoples Perception and less initiatives taken by people/govt are the reason.
He asks, Who can run business in continuous loss? What about risk management?
He Answers – Farmer is running business in continuous loss from years, Market like Input(Seed, Fertlizer etc) in agriculture is good but the problem/issue is with output market and only Amul is one known in the field. Need is to organize Output market, need is of people who can work for people who working towards output and production for them.
He emphasize, Society also need to Change, If I compare middle class with farmer, middle class never spent more than one month salary for food requirements out of 12 in a year, school, electricity, petrol, home emi is expensive and taking more money and when middle class have saving he invest it, he buy flats/assets but if farmer get money he will spent, he will contribute to country(GDP) and country will grow.
Even after giving food security bill and formulate system in country, still effort is on how to keep the price of vegetables at minimum/low. If you are giving all to poor people, give right price to farmer aswell.
I cant sell 12 tomato for 500 ruppee but I can sell 12 flower of 500 rs this is because of perception, vegetable have perception but flowers don’t have. We have perception that vegetable can’t price/cost more.
These are the problem area, and because of this farmer want to save himself off farming, we get figures that farmer don’t want to do agriculture, he want his child to be security guard, police or anything else but not farmer because his business is not viable.
Nice Example from Ministers Life: Explaining real life problem in farmer life.
He have 5 acre(Famliy – father& uncle) land farming of same in 80’s gave him around 25k gross and his salary was also of same amount, later when he got married his wife also got around same amount so he decided to pursue his interest in politics and left his job, now at present her wife have monthly income of around 66k in a month and his land gave him around 66k in a year after deducting cost, he ask what made this change in 10-15 year that a farmer hardly get 66k in a year.
At end he said:
He is here at this forum to find people like Mr. Kurien(Amul) who is example of output market in agriculture and benefit farmer, correct perception of society who think farmer shall not get more price, he is looking for pro farmer plan to come from govt.
Mr Ram Mudholkar, Dupont – We have to see agriculture in a new way with completely a new thinking hat by all stakeholder and setting a new direction for agriculture.
