Digital agriculture, climate action to safeguard and strengthen farming sector: PM Modi
India Today
PM Modi batted for organic farming and digital agriculture to safeguard farmers from the challenges posed by climate change.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said the government is making a push for organic farming and digital agriculture to protect farmers from the impact of climate change, for which it has made special provisions in this year’s Union Budget.
“To save our farmers from climate challenge, our focus is on the fusion of both back to basics and march to future. Our focus is on more than 80 per cent of small farmers of the country who need us the most. The Union Budget 2022-23 is focused on organic farming and digital agriculture,” he said at the International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Hyderabad.
PM Modi is in Hyderabad today to unveil the Statue of Equality and kickstart the 50th anniversary celebrations of agricultural research organisation ICRISAT. The prime minister also inaugurated ICRISAT’s Climate Change Research Facility on Plant Protection and Rapid Generation Advancement Facility.
PM Modi noted that over the last five decades, ICRISAT has helped other nations in making agriculture easy and sustainable, and expressed the hope that the organisation would continue to do the same to strengthen India’s farming sector.
He also said that digital agriculture is the future of our mostly agrarian country and the government is making efforts to utilise digital technology to empower farmers.
Furthermore, the Centre is also focused on building Farmer Producer Organizations (FPO) to strengthen the entire agriculture value chain. “By organising the small farmers of the country into thousands of FPOs, we want to make them an aware and big market force,” the prime minister said.
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