Bapat stresses on sustainable development model for farmers
Pune: With several farmers committing suicide across the State, the government is planning a sustainable development model for farmers to prevent suicides. Several farmers across the State were benefited by the loan waiver scheme of Maharashtra government on Wednesday.
However, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said that loan waiver for farmers is not the solution towards solving problems related to farmers and stressed on the need to have a sustainable development of agriculture sector.
Speaking at the press meet, Pune District Guardian Minister Girish Bapat said various schemes in favour of farmers need to be implemented in the State. “Farmers and their family members are ready to work hard in their fields but it is up to us to provide them necessary facilities so that agriculture business survives,” added Bapat.
He said that keeping these things in mind the investment in the agriculture sector has been increased from Rs 21,000 crore in 2011-12, by almost three times to Rs 63,000 crore. Similarly, to control prices of agriculture commodities, the government will be linking Aadhaar number of businessmen when they procure agriculture goods from government procurement centres.
“Also records will be maintained online about farmers while they are sowing. Earlier, it was observed that middlemen would buy grains from farmers at low prices and then sell at high prices which would impact the minimum support price,” added Bapat.
He highlighted the need to provide water, electricity and other facilities to farmers for the development in the agriculture sector. “Programmes like Jalyukt Shivar, (a water conservation programme) has helped us to reduce the number of water tankers required in a village. There is need of more such methods to increase agriculture productivity in the State,” added Bapat.
