India’s agriculture sector has been witnessing robust growth with an average annual growth rate of 4.6 percent over the last six years, writes the India Tribune in an article about improvements to food security in India.
Agriculture and related sectors contributed significantly toward India’s overall growth, development, and food security. Measures taken by the government to augment crop and livestock productivity, ensure certainty of returns to the farmers through price support (Minimum Support Price), promote crop diversification” and, focused interventions to “enhance credit availability, facilitate mechanization and boost horticulture and organic farming, helped grow the sector and its buoyancy. An empirical study by the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) found that the scheme has helped address the liquidity constraints of farmers for buying agricultural inputs, helped the small and marginal farmers to meet their daily consumption, education, health, and other incidental expenses.
Republished in DT Next (India), Tripuraindia (India), Money Control as “Room for growth: Economic Survey lists out hits and misses in the agri sector.”