Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has said that the Centre and state governments are working on a new scheme to help farmers transport the farm produce to other states and markets. He added the contribution of the farm sector to the country's GDP is 18 per cent, and the government is working on many areas to further strengthen the sector.
He stressed the judicious use of natural resources and called for stopping the indiscriminate use of pesticides. He said ‘The need of the hour is to move towards natural farming, and we have to take this forward with full potential’. He added the launch of the river-linking project on December 25 will benefit the farmers, and called for the development of a technology to irrigate more with less water.
The minister stated that there is a need to take lab work to fields and urged the researchers not to be confined to the lab. He emphasised that information related to the agriculture sector should not be limited to English language only and should be published in different languages so that the distance between labs to land can be bridged.