The agricultural sector—the backbone of the Indian economy—is looking forward to announcements related to yield improvement, climate-resilient farming and empowering FPOs or farmer producer organisations in Budget 2025, set to be presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1.
The government should increase investment in irrigation facilities and target covering 80 percent of gross cropped area under irrigation by 2030, said the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in its budget recommendations. The government should expedite ongoing projects under the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana and promote wider usage of irrigation best practices from various states, it added.
Agriculture and allied sectors employ 46 percent of the country’s population. However, India’s gross value added (GVA) from agriculture stands at Rs 23 lakh crore, which translates into a share of just 18 percent in the total GVA.
Deloitte, in its budget recommendations, said the government should announce crop-wise programmes for selected crop clusters with support for the use of specialised machinery, the right package of practices, availability and affordability of inputs, as well as timely crop advisory and extension services for farmers or crop-focused FPOs.
“Launch an agricultural yields mission for bottom 100 districts on the lines of aspirational districts programme,” read FICCI's recommendations for Budget 2025.
Alos on the wish list are a focus on climate-resilient farming with long-term climate forecast models, better varieties of climate resilient seeds and climate-smart farming practices.
Digital adoption in agriculture
Analysts also expect measures to accelerate digitisation of the agriculture sector to enable farmers to reduce costs, increase farm yields, improve produce quality and obtain better price realisation.
CII said the government should expedite the rollout of Agri Stack, an open-source digital public infrastructure for agriculture. The government should standardise digitisation of land records and link digitised land records to farmer IDs and with the digital agri stack, it added.
Strengthening FPOs
Measures to empower FPOs also remains a top ask from the agriculture sector for better operations and higher profits for member farmers.
“Capacity building and incentives for FPOs to enable produce aggregation, storage and value addition and developing right market linkages with private players or institutional buyers. Facilitating linkages of FPOs with financing institutions to help members access institutional credit. Development and execution of regular training programs and workshops for FPOs at the district/ state level and basic online modules for FPO managers,” Deloitte proposed.
CII asked the government to launch a new converged scheme for all Producer Collectives such as FPOs, self-help groups and cooperatives to implement all relevant agri-related schemes, for achieving scale.
FPOs can play a vital role for small and marginal farmers by providing support at every stage of the crop value chain. While promoting the formation of FPOs is necessary, it is equally important that these FPOs run smoothly to ensure profitability for their farmer members, said Deloitte.
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