Karnataka budget: Giving farm sector a push and tackling burning issues

The State Budget presented by H.D. Kumaraswamy on Friday focusses on schemes pertaining to agriculture and allied sectors with a total outlay of ₹46,853 crore, and the thrust is on addressing the burning issues of marketing and drought-proofing.
Other issues such as secondary and tertiary farming have also been touched upon. These have come amid prediction of a negative growth rate of 4.5% in the farm sector owing to drought.
With crash in price of crops becoming a regular phenomenon, the budget has proposed to introduce Raitha Kanaja scheme that involves a revolving fund of ₹510 crore for providing minimum support price to 12 crops. The highlight of the scheme is that it will have a permanent procurement centre at every agricultural produce marketing committee yard so that farmers can make use of the facility as and when the price crashes.
Similarly, for perishable produce such as onion, potato and tomato, whose price is volatile, the budget has introduced “price deficiency payment” scheme. Under this, a base price would be declared, and farmers would get the differential amount between the base price and their actual selling price if there is a drop in the price.
Farmers have also been allowed to store their produce in government warehouses for free up to eight months at times of price crash.

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