The National Advisory Council (NAC), headed by UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, will consider ways to boost Indian agriculture as part of its drive to review the draft food security bill on July 1.
“The NAC will address the sorry state of Indian agriculture, which recorded negative (-2 per cent) growth in 2010, and try to find ways to boost it in the long term,” said an NAC member. “The idea is to develop agriculture to an extent that food shortage is never a problem.”
The move echoes with the concerns expressed in the past by the UPA chairperson on the issue of agricultural growth, which is linked to controlling high food inflation.
Concerned over the slow pace of agricultural growth, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently called for increasing it to four per cent in order to achieve inclusive growth and food security. Agriculture extension is another area, which needed urgent attention, particularly from the state governments, he said.
The PM took note of the crisis in the agricultural sector and formed a working group on agriculture production headed by Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda with his counterparts from Punjab, Parkash Singh Badal, West Bengal, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Bihar, Nitish Kumar as members.
The group has suggested leasing foreign farmlands to meet the domestic demand supply gap in crops like pulses and edible oils besides boosting the Indian agriculture.