The Centre is committed to procuring Tur, Urad and Masur at Minimum Support Prices (MSP) to ensure crop diversification and achieve self-sufficiency in pulses production, Union Minister of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare and Rural Development Shivraj Singh Chouhan said on Friday.
Chairing a virtual meeting with agriculture ministers of various states at Krishi Bhawan in New Delhi, he said the e-Samridhi portal has been launched through National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd. (NAFED) and National Cooperative Consumers’ Federation of India Limited (NCCF) for registration of farmers and the government is committed to procuring these pulses at MSP for farmers registered on the portal.
He urged the state governments to encourage more and more farmers to register on this portal so that they can avail the facility of assured procurement.
The Union Minister said the country is not self-sufficient in production of these three crops and aims to achieve self-sufficiency by 2027.
Mr Chauhan complemented the states for their efforts in increasing pulses production by 50 percent since 2015-16 but called for more efforts in increasing the yield per hectare and motivating farmers for growing pulses.
He appreciated the fact that the country has achieved self-sufficiency in green gram (moong) and gram (chana) and mentioned that the country has reduced dependency on imports from 30 per cent to 10 per cent during the last 10 years.
He urged the states to work as a team with the Centre for making India not only self-sufficient in foodgrains production but also the Food basket of the World.
He also spoke about the new Model Pulses Village scheme which is being rolled out from the current Kharif season. The minister requested the State Governments to utilize the fallow lands which are available for pulses after the rice crop is harvested. Mr Chauhan also asked the State Governments to take up inter-cropping of Tur in a vigorous manner.