Badal forms panel to improve farmers' economic conditions

Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today set up a panel to suggest measures for improving economic conditions of farmers.
Addressing the agriculture summit here, the Chief Minister said the committee headed by the Chairman Punjab State Farmers' Commission Dr G S Kalkat, would comprise agriculture scientists, experts, economists and progressive farmers.
The panel would finalise a time bound action plan to bail out "beleaguered" peasantry from the present crisis, he said.
"Due to the shrinking of current land holdings, rising cost of the agriculture inputs coupled with the non remunerative MSP and the apathetic attitude of the centre, agriculture was no longer a profitable venture and was passing through a severe crisis," Badal said.

Asking farmers to minimise their expenditure, Badal said unproductive expenditure by owning tractors and expensive farm equipments just for the sake of false prestige must be curtailed.
Instead farmers must avail these services being rendered by a well knit network of agro service centers across the state on custom hiring basis, Badal stressed.

He also gave a slogan, 'Minimise wasteful expenditure to maximise profits'.
In order to boost research in agriculture, the Chief Minister also demanded that the Union Government must earmark at least two per cent of the total agriculture GDP on R&D.
Badal reiterated that the Union government must present a separate budget for Agriculture on the lines of Union Railway Budget to facilitate the country's 65 per cent population dependent on agriculture.

Expressing concern over the deepening agrarian crisis, the Chief Minister said that it was extremely difficult for any state government, institution or a person to resolve this grave problem adding that the need of the hour was that the union government must take initiatives to make agriculture a profitable venture.
He said the "greatest" fault lies in the mechanism of fixing the cost of the agriculture produce which must be rectified.
Badal claimed that the Union government neither takes the states nor the other stakeholders related with agriculture in confidence before fixing the MSP of the crops.