Highlights Of Union Budget 2020-21 In Agriculture

Introduction: Union Budget of Agriculture

The Ministry of Agriculture has allocated around Rs. 131,531, crore of the total allocation for the Union Budget that is Rs.34,83,236 crores, by the government.

The Union budget of Agriculture has slashed by 8.5% this year.PM Kisan Scheme, which was actually for supporting our farmers, observe a 13% drop in the budget, which is around 10,000 crore, lesser than the last year’s initial allotment.

The budget mainly focuses on schemes to decrease financial stress and increasing earning opportunities for the farmers in the best possible way by the year 2022.

Key points

• The highlighted part for the agriculture sector in a 2-hour long speech was how the government has increasing income for our farmers.
• Crops like wheat, pulses, and cotton have increased their production and since then (2016), a total of around 43.36 lakhs of farmers have benefitted. She further added the amount paid to our wheat farmers increased by more than 121%, while for rice farmers there’s a tremendous increase of 170.23% this time.
• Finance Minister also announced an increase in allocation to the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund, which is 30-40 thousand crores, for state-controlled Mandis.
• The main reason that fears farmers, is the government planning to destroy the Mandi system through new farm laws. This point was relevant, a large number of farmers protesting for a legal guarantee to Minimum Support Price (MSP). Fearing government will end this by passing 3 new farm laws, with the aim of freeing up agriculture markets. But she assured them, that this will not be taken down, instead. This will continue with the good hike in the future.
• She promotes digitization by telling about the online trading platform, e-NAM, in India, which currently got 1.68 farmers registered.
• No changes in previous schemes for farmers, that proposed earlier for their benefits.

Conclusion

Overall, The budget didn’t see any increase in income for supporting small farmers, under PM Kisan Scheme, as they’re assuming.

The only good news is SVAMITVA SCHEME, that introduces last year in Oct 2020. Initially for 6 states, now implemented Nationally. Under which farmers use their assets as financial support in taking loans and other benefits.

Although, the government increased allocation under Priority Sector Lending (PSL) up to Rs  16.5 lakh crore. Just 30% have that benefit to access to institutional credit.

And the main challenge is to improve this for small farmers too in the coming years.