Odisha Cabinet Approves New Agriculture Policy ”Samridhi”

Bhubaneswar: In a bid to boost farmer income with focus on providing market linkages and technical support, the Odisha Cabinet headed by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik today approved the Agriculture Policy 2020 named as ‘SAMRIDHI’.

The policy has been prepared with objectives of ensuring continuous growth in farmers” income, making the growth process inclusive of small and marginal farmers and ensuring sustainable, stable, and scalabe agricultural growth.

The key components of achieving agriculture vision of Odisha are designed as follows – SAMRIDHI-

• S: Leveraging Science and Technology
• A: Adaptation to Climate change
• M: Markets (Domestic and global), physical and financial, spot and future
• R: Resource use efficiency ensuring higher productivity
• I : Creating appropriate Infrastructure
• D: Diversification of production to’ high value agriculture
• H: Human resource upgrading and skilling
• I: Strengthening Institutions

The agriculture policy focuses on creating an ecosystem interlining inputs-production-markets, sustainable increase in yields of paddy and diversification to high value agriculture, encouraging efficient and ecologically sensitive use of inputs mainly water, land and soil.

It also emphasizes on promoting processing which include cleaning, grading etc for better value capture, creating value chains particularly for vegetables and livestocks, reducing wastages by promoting pre and post harvest management, adopting to climate change techniques and technology.

The agriculture policy also encompases activities in different sectors of fisheries, livestock, procurement, credit, insurance and irrigation for boosting the overall farmers” income.

The cabinet also approved an amendment to the Odisha District Revenue Service (Method of Recruitment and Conditions of Service) Rules, 1983.

The government also decided to give one-time relaxation in enhancing the upper age limit from 33 years to 48 years for recruitment of lectures under rule 4(2)(c) of Orissa Education Service (College Branch) Recruitment Rules 1990.