Question : DEMAND FOR RICE AND WHEAT

(a) whether the demand for rice and wheat in the country is likely to be 26 crore tonnes by the year 2020 which is double that of the demand in the year 2000;

(b) if so, the steps taken by the Government to bolster the production of foodgrains and the extent to which the foodgrains are targeted to be increased during each of the next five years; and

(c) the concrete measures being taken by the Government to encourage farmers and to ensure availability of remunerative prices to the farmers for their agricultural produce?

MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE (SHRI HUKUMDEO NARAYAN YADAV)

(a) to (c): The demand for a commodity at a given point of time depends upon various factors such as prices, incomes, population, pattern of consumption, substitutes available, etc. The Working Group on Crop Husbandry, Demand and Supply Projections and Agricultural Inputs set up for the 10th Five Year Plan (2002- 07), based on normative approach, has estimated the demand for cereals including rice and wheat at 203.709 million tonnes and for pulses at 17.714 million tonnes, totaling 221.423 million tonnes of foodgrains at the terminal year of the Tenth Plan.

In order to improve the performance of the agriculture sector, the Government have launched various new initiatives such as, promotion of watershed development programmes, emphasis on developing and promoting new technologies, measures for increasing availability of agricultural credit, credit linked subsidy scheme for augmenting storage/cold storage capacity, Technology Mission for Integrated Development of horticulture in North-eastern States, market Information Network and National Agriculture Insurance Scheme etc. The Government have also switched over from the conventional schematic approach to macro- management mode from November, 2000 for providing assistance to States. The Macro-Management scheme integrates 27 schemes into one for supplementing and complementing the efforts of State Governments through work plans. This gives flexibility to States to address specific problems faced by them depending on local requirements, avoid overlapping in the contents of different schemes and aim at an all- round development of agriculture.

The Government encourages farmers to increase production through price policy which includes implementation of Minimum Support Price (MSP) and Market Intervention Scheme (MIS). Keeping in view the need to compensate farmers for the losses suffered in unirrigated areas and the additional expenditure in irrigated areas, the Government announced Special Drought Relief price ranging from Rs.5 to 20 per quintal for kharif crops of 2002-03 season.