Press Information Bureau – 9 Novmber 2017

Table of Contents

Ministry of Agriculture

Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Shri Radha Mohan Singh
India is one of the oldest organic agricultural nations of the world and a large part of the country still practices traditional organic farming.
Organic World Congress 2017 at India Expo Centre in Greater Noida
Organized by: International Federation of Organic Farming Movements (IFOAM) and OAFI
Expected participation: 1,400 representatives from 110 countries, and 2000 Indian delegates.

Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana was launched in 2015-16
So far 28,750 farmers have been benefited.
For the marketing of organic products, the government is allocating Rs.5 lakh per district for the setting up of sales outlet.
Union Agriculture Minister said some international scientists call such farming “default organic”.
However, it is important to understand that often farmers, who continue with these methods, are organic farmers by choice.
Using their wisdom, they have been treading this path for centuries.
They are not happy with chemicals and pesticides and choose not to use them.
Therefore, their farming practices cannot be called “default” in any way.

International Mentoring Summit
Theme: ‘Mentoring Young Grampreneurs for Inclusive Growth’
His Royal Highness Prince Charles and other dignitaries were present on the occasion.
V-Prez said fostering Grampreneurship can transform aspirational rural India.
Rural India is rapidly changing and the rural youth too are well informed, are eager to learn, have an entrepreneurial spirit, and quite often even global aspirations.
Policies like Start-up India and Atal Innovation Mission are geared to support the start-up environment, he added.
Constraints:

2. advantages of technology
3. marketing support

The Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, Shri Kiren Rijiju has said that India need to prepare itself for moving towards Disaster Risk Management (DRM) and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) from an approach of traditional Disaster Management.
Disaster Mitigation Strategy should be areas of priority for addressing Disaster Risk Management.
Reaching out to the people and communities is the primary responsibility of all stakeholders and efforts should be to make people aware, informed and to guide them during emergency situations. He urged community groups and stakeholders to find innovative ways to inform people on time in scenarios of Disaster Management.
Government and Facebook became partners on disaster response.

To curb cheap shipments and give positive price signal to farmers in the ongoing Rabi season.
It has also imposed import duty of 50 per cent on peas to check cheaper shipments from countries like Canada and to boost domestic prices.
In a notification, the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) said, it seeks to increase rate of basic customs duty on wheat from 10 to 20 per cent and on Peas from present Nil rate to 50 per cent.
In March, the government had imposed 10 per cent import duty on wheat to contain sharp fall in local prices in view of bumper crop.