Initiative to make agriculture more income centric than farming centric to motivate young people to take up farming

Agri Nation Network

Porvorim | 2 Aug 2017

In a bid to make agriculture more income centric, Goa government announced that it would promote Goan agricultural produce under the State brand called ‘BIG – Born in Goa’. The government also proposed to introduce an IT platform called Agri-Cloud wherein the producer will be introduced to the buyer of the product.

State’s agri minister Vijay Sardesai said the government is set to bring about a revolution to make agriculture more income centric than farming centric.

He said, “The State will create the brand ‘BIG – Born in Goa’ for the agri produce ensuring better income and promotion and marketing across the world. Our challenge is to bring revolution in farming and it is only youth who can bring the revolution. The aim is to motivate young people and get them into farming”.

Minister also said, “Our Prime Minister’s mission is to double the farmer’s income by 2022. For the same, we have to launch a revolution. For Goa the time has come where we need to take our farmers forward. We have high quality produce which is not marketed well. If we manage to do that we can achieve the mission of doubling the farmers’ income.”

The minister informed that the state government is working on a six-pronged strategy to revive agriculture in the state. He said the stress will also be given on organic farming.

On the strategy, he said,  “We have to identify micro climate zones and set up horticulture hub network and post harvest cold chains at these hubs. We have to identify top ten crops which are most remunerative in that particular micro climate. We should also develop crop demonstration areas, dissemination centre for seeds and other facilities”.

The minister also said that on lines of industrial estates, the horticulture estates would be established in the state.

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