Renowned public policy think tank Centre for Civil Society organised a webinar on “The Role of Agri-businesses in Doubling Farmers Income.” The session was coordinated by Prashant Narang, Associate Director, Centre for Civil Society along with dignitaries such as Anand Chandra, Executive Director- Arya Collateral, a leading post-harvest warehousing and financial solutions company, Sathya Raghu, Co-Founder, Khyeti, Sudhanshu Kumar, Farmpreneur and owner of the most technologically advanced farm in Bihar.
The dignitaries spoke on the forthcoming challenges and the macro-level changes which will arise due to the new farm bills, namely - Farmer’s Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020, The Farmer (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020, and The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, 2020.
Anand Chandra shared his insights on market linkages and commodity warehousing which will play a major part in the coming times as there will be no restrictions for anyone to procure commodities from any part of India.
Chandra said, “The many good initiatives and reforms in agriculture by the central government will reach a logical conclusion when there is greater synergy between central and state government on concurrent list matters.”
“The Agri outlook of India is very positive as compared to the rest of the world as we produce crops of very high quality with low investments, the only task in front of us is to store and manage crops. Farmer’s income can only be doubled when the crops are managed well and the produce is not getting wasted. Arya has come up with a platform called a2zgodaam.com to help farmers for all their post-harvest needs of storing crops to sell them and has seen a significant rise since launch” Chandra added.
Prashant Narang, Associate Director, Centre for Civil Society said, “The outlook of the government policies look very positive but there are still some of the changes which need to be made to make our Agri policies more successful resulting not just doubling farmers income but hopefully it can triple or quadruple farmers income by 2025.”
