PM Broke Election Promise To Farmers: Pocharam

Telangana Agriculture Minister Pocharam Srinivas Reddy today expressed displeasure at the Centre for not implementing the recommendations of the Swaminathan Committee on farm productivity and on offering remunerative prices and funds for micro-irrigation.

Speaking at a program on the farm sector, Pocharam said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not keeping his election promise on the issue.

He demanded that the Centre increase allocation of funds for micro-irrigation to boost the agrarian economy and help improve the lot of the farmers.

He stressed on the need for increasing agricultural productivity to help farmers' incomes.

The minister also said that the farmers should be flourishing with their produce but were not getting good prices. The farm yield in India was only 3.7 tons per hectare, which was very low compared to China and Japan, he said. This year the agriculture produce was expected to be only around 272 million tons, he lamented.

Reddy exhorted the Krishi Vignan Kendras and agriculture varsities to put in efforts to enhance farm yield to enable a significant increase in productivity.