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The Centre will soon come up with an overhauled version of agriculture insurance scheme, which would be termed 'Agriculture Income Insurance Scheme' to ensure minimum income to farmers in case of crop loss.
"To ensure at least minimum income to farmers, we will launch Agriculture Income Insurance Scheme next year," said, Radha Mohan Singh, Union agriculture minister here on Tuesday. He was speaking at the plenary session of the two-day national seminar hosted by Madhya Pradesh government to give a final shape to the proposed new crop insurance scheme.
"There would be no more discussions on the proposed agriculture insurance scheme," Singh said.
The minister also said his government would soon shell out a considerable fund for Rs 50,000 per hectare under newly floated "Traditional Agriculture Development Scheme."
The Central government would also provide fund for soil health management to all states, Singh added.
Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan suggested formation of a corpus known as "Kisan Kalyan Kosh' (Farmers Welfare Fund) in case the Centre delayed on the proposed alternative crop insurance scheme.
"Each year, the state government shells out Rs 2,000-3,000 crore to mitigate losses under crop loss scheme or otherwise," Chouhan said, adding, "the Centre and the state government would contribute to this fund."
Chouhan stressed that the scheme must be based on revenue-model instead of yield-based model. "To provide almost 100% cover to the farmers, we need to adopt revenue-based model of agriculture income insurance scheme, if launched," he said.
