As per Provisional Estimates of Annual National Income, released by National Statistical Office (NSO), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) on 31st, May 2021, the share of Agriculture and Allied Sectors in total Gross Value Added (GVA) of the country has increased from 18.4% in 2019-20 to 20.2% in 2020-21 at current prices.
The Gross Value Added of Agriculture and Allied Sectors at current price has increased from 33.94 lakh crore in 2019-20 to 36.16 lakh crore in 2020-21.
In order to facilitate the marketing of agricultural produce of the farmers during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government had issued advisory to States/Union Territories (UTs) to facilitate Direct Marketing, enabling direct purchase from the farmers/ Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs)/ Cooperatives etc. by liberalizing regulations under respective State Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) Acts.
The Government also issued advisories to States/UTs to ensure inter-state and intra-state movement of vehicles carrying the agriculture produce in addition to setting up of monitoring cell to keep watch and extend immediate help for seamless movement of such vehicles including coordination for issue of permits to trucks.
Further, in order to decongest wholesale markets, FPO trading module has been launched to facilitate FPOs to trade their agri produce from their collection centre without bringing the produce to APMC. Warehouse based trading module was also launched to enable farmers to sell their produce from WDRA registered warehouses notified as deemed market
Further, to address the transportation issues of Farmers and other stake holders during Covid-19, the Government has launched the Kisan Rath Mobile App on 17.04.2020. The App facilitates the Farmers, FPOs and Traders to post their load requests which are sent to transport aggregators and individual transporters who in turn respond to the load requests.
The Government has taken necessary measures to ensure smooth sowing and harvesting operations during COVID-19 pandemic. As per 3rd advance estimates for 2020-21, total food grain production in the country is estimated at record 305.44 million tones which is higher by 7.94 million tonnes than the production of food grain during 2019-20. Similarly, total horticulture production in 2020-21 is estimated to a record 331.05 million tones which is an increase of about 10.6 million tone over that achieved in 2019-20.
This information was given in a written reply by the Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Shri Narendra Singh Tomar in Lok Sabha.
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