Why in News?
The Odisha government launched its new State Agricultural Policy (SAP) 2020-SAMRUDHI that focuses on profitability for farmers.
What is Samrudhi?
- Samrudhi is focused on the social and economic well-being of farmers, sharecroppers and landless agriculture households.
- It aims to actualise the untapped potential of agriculture, while ensuring growth process is environmentally, economically and technologically inclusive.
- It is based on an 8-pillar strategy focused on simultaneous reforms.
What is the 8-pillar strategy?
- The policy lays emphasis on diversification, market linkages and use of technology.
- It suggests mechanisms to orient governance reforms towards farmer-centricity, which is in alignment with its flagship programmes.
- It recommends the creation of agriculture production clusters.
- It paves the way for the creation of an agro-ecological map, which will help in identify an ideal cropping pattern.
- The policy also suggests that these clusters should be linked to the market aggressively by removing all the existing barriers.
- Innovative market reforms like the eNAM portal, Gramin Agricultural Markets (GrAM), creation of market information system for disseminating current and forecasted prices have been laid down.
- Special focus has been given to the adoption of model acts like the Model Contract Farming Act, etc, with suitable changes necessary for its implementation in Odisha.
- The policy also emphasises development of warehousing and quality testing infrastructure for better marketing of the crops.
- The agriculture policy pushes for widespread usage of new-age technology to increase the quality of farming and farm products.
What sectors does Samrudhi want to develop?
- It provides recommendations for developing the livestock and fisheries, as they have contributed the most to the growth of farmer incomes.
- For livestock, it includes elements like protection of animals from diseases, artificial insemination, conservation of indigenous species and encouraging the private sector to create value chains.
- For fisheries, the focus is on the promotion of inland fisheries and digitisation of Odisha’s assets like ponds and lakes.
How was Samrudhi formed?
- The process followed for the creation of Samrudhi has been participative with the involvement of various government departments, policy experts, NGOs working with Odisha.
- To create the policy, relevant data for the last 15 years was analysed and specific opportunity areas for policy interventions were identified.
- This policy is a time-bound, action-oriented document that clearly lists outcome targets the state should achieve over the next five years.
Source: The Financial Express
