Union Home and Cooperation Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday stressed the need for promoting organic farming in the country.
He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi has set several targets to fulfil the goal of making India self-reliant in ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’ and one such target is organic farming.
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He was addressing a national symposium on promoting organic products through cooperatives. The event was organised by the National Cooperative Organics Limited in New Delhi.
Shah underlined the need to adopt a multidimensional approach in achieving the target of 50 per cent organic farming in the country. He also highlighted the adverse effects of the overuse of pesticides and emphasised the need to reduce the use of pesticides.
On the occasion, he launched the National Cooperative Organics Limited (NCOL), its logo, website and brochure. The minister said NCOL aims to cover the entire supply chain of organic products through cooperative networks by undertaking various activities like aggregation, certification, production, testing, procurement, storage, processing, branding, packaging, labelling, marketing, etc for the ultimate benefit of farmer members.
Organic agriculture is practised in 190 countries on 749 lakh hectares of land and India ranks fourth globally in organic agricultural land and first in number of producers as per the 2020 data.