Modi govt shows way to check farm woes: PK Mishra

NEW DELHI: Academic research has to be conducted on agricultural risks and why even well-planned agricultural development initiatives in the past decades have not yielded expected outcomes, the Additional Principal Secretary to the PM, PK Mishra, has said.

In his inaugural address to the 78th annual conference of the Indian Society of Agricultural Economics in New Delhi on Thursday, Mishra said there were a few fundamental issues of concern: The need to address agricultural risks effectively and adequately, non-farm sector activities which have a bearing on agriculture and integrating them with policy and practice. The inability to meet desired results in the sector may be because the three aspects have not been addressed effectively by conventional policy which worked in silos, he said.

However, in the last four years, the Modi government has effected a ‘paradigm shift’, with an integrated approach and a comprehensive framework to address farmer distress and moved beyond productivity alone, he said. This framework has focused on increasing production and reducing input costs and losses, expanding risk mitigation measures to protect the farmer against yield and price risks, pushing up investment in the sector and introducing governance reforms, he said.


A critical element of this framework involves linking development activities in related sectors such as water resources, soil health, food processing, rural development, power, information technology, environment and fertilisers. This is complemented by another range of schemes such as Ayushman Bharat, he said.