Prof Ramesh Chand, Member, NITI Aayog, said that Indian agriculture sector faces issues in customized technology and implementation of the policy reforms at ground level, especially at the state level. "Technology is the prime mover and India is facing serious problems both in terms of technology and policy reforms.", he said. He further added that at the state level various laws like Model APLM Act, Model Agricultural Land leasing Act and contract farming needs to be further pushed.
He further said that the states should be encouraged to play an active role in the overall growth of the agriculture sector and emphasized on the need for private sector to come forward. "We need to give the right role to right people and institutions. Market and the private people are the right people to pay competitive prices to farmers and we should remove hurdles which come in the way of the market," said Prof Chand.
He said that for the first time the 15th Finance Commission has included a provision to give performance linked grants to states to undertake some agricultural reform. "The Commission has included reform in agriculture sector among the top 5 areas for which next year states will be provided with incentives," said Prof Chand.
He added that agriculture sector is witnessing the growth but with an increase in cost of production and it is one of the reasons why we are losing on export competitiveness. "When you increase the yield average cost of production increases and when this increase, obviously farmers will start asking for higher and higher prices. This factor has started affecting the Indian agriculture sector," Prof Chand said.
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