Government to introduce farm income insurance scheme: Agriculture Minister

GANDHINAGAR: The government plans to introduce Farm Income Insurance ( FII) scheme to give cover on earnings expected from crop yield, Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh said here today.

The minister also said that his Ministry would provide soil health cards to all farmers in the country which would inform them about strengths and weakness of their farm soil.

"Only subsidy cannot ensure farmers' income. While some states have opted to implement the old National Agriculture Insurance Scheme (NAIS), some opted to implement a modified NAIS. However, Gujarat came up with this idea of an income-based agriculture scheme," Singh said.

"We have been holding meetings to finalise the FII scheme. I hope that the Gujarat government will give its guidance to make it effective," Singh said.

In 1999, the Government of India introduced a National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (NAIS), which operates on the basis of area-based crop insurance to protect farmers against unavoidable perils like drought, heat, insects and others.

Later, NAIS was replaced by a modified NAIS, which was introduced during 2010-11. Both NAIS and Modified NAIS provide cover against failure of crop (yield) to farmers.

However, FII has been designed to address both crop yield risk as well as price risk to stabilise farmers' incomes. As per the FII scheme, if actual incomes of farmers fall short of guaranteed income, (that is average yield multiplied by minimum support price) then they would be eligible for compensation.

FII was first introduced during 2003-04 on a pilot basis in 22 districts of 14 states, after which it was discontinued in 2004.