Question : Crop-specific Research Institutions

(a) whether the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has established commodity/crop-specific research institutions throughout the country, if so, the details thereof;

(b) the extent to which these institutions are able to provide vital information required by the farmers and in extending market intelligence;

(c) whether the Union Government is planning to develop any mechanism to ensure fair and remunerative prices to farmers throughout the year, if so, the details thereof;

(d) whether farmers are not reaping the benefits of the introduction of e-market systems in Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMCs), if so, the reasons therefor; and

(e) the steps taken by the Union Government to evolve a holistic approach to address the agrarian crisis?

THE MINISTER OF AGRICUTLRURE AND FARMERS WELFARE
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(a) & (b): Yes, Sir. The ICAR has established 113 commodity specific Institutions throughout the country which include 28 of Crop Science, 23 of Horticulture Science, 15 Natural Resource Management, 5 of Agricultural Engineering, 19 of Animal Science, 8 Fisheries Science, 11 of Agricultural Extension and 4 of Agricultural Education.
The ICAR’s national level research institutes and its All India Coordinated Research Project (AICRP) network of state/central agricultural universities and 725 Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs) established across the country are truly the hubs for knowledge and technical resources on all aspects of agriculture.
All these institutes provide beneficial information to the farmers on various aspects of agriculture sciences and technology through a number of outreach programmes. These programmes include - Frontline Demonstrations (FLDs), Cluster Frontline Demonstrations (C-FLDs), Farmers Fairs, Field Days, farmers exposure visits, Print and Electronic mass/social media programme through radio/TV/Mobile/Internet, trainings and distribution of technical literature, etc. The ICAR institutes also conduct entrepreneurial development and start up support programmes through many Agri-Business Incubation Centres (ABIC) established across the institutes and KVKs.

All the 725 KVKs took up a large number of extension activities during 2020-21 which include 36000 On Farm Trials, 216000 Frontline Demonstrations, training of 15.76 lakhs farmers, messaging of about 6458 lakh mobile agro-advisories, etc. The market intelligence models developed by the ICAR are used by the State Agricultural Universities to generate price forecasts for important agricultural commodities.

(c) to (e): The Government in its Union Budget for 2018-19 had announced the pre-determined principle to keep Minimum Support Price (MSP) at a level of one and half times of the cost of production. Accordingly, Government has increased the MSP for all mandated Kharif, Rabi and other commercial crops with a return of atleast 50 per cent over all India weighted average cost of production from the agricultural year 2018-19 onwards. In addition to cost of production, Commission for Agricultural Cost & Prices (CACP) also considers various other factors while recommending MSP which include overall demand-supply situations of various crops in domestic and world markets, domestic and international prices, inter-crop price parity, terms of trade between agriculture and non-agriculture sector among others.

Several steps have been taken by the Ministry for the benefits of farmers by way of providing schemes and interventions for improving the income of farmers. The details of some of such steps are given at Annexure.

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