siliconindia | | December 20198in my opinionBy Dr Malini Saba, Founder & Chairman, Saba Industries & Saba Family FoundationsA successful business woman and philanthropist, Dr. Malini Saba has been at the forefront of women's rights and positively impacting the lives of low income and at-risk women and children worldwideHOW CAN THE CURRENT STATUS OF FARMING BE ENHANCED?arming is one of the most widely followed oc-cupations in our country. In India, about 58 percent of our population is dependent on this sector for their survival while their produce is responsible for feeding about 16.8 percent of the total world's population. But these facts do not present the full picture. The truth is that in the past few years our agricultural scenario has witnessed a down-fall. While earlier it contributed 61 percent to our GDP, today its contribution has reduced to only 19 percent. This is mainly because of the many factors spiralling around the slowdown in the growth rate of output, which in turn is leading to declining farmer's income and resulting in farmer's distress.Now in order to enhance the present farming status, efforts should be made to increase the growth rate of out-put. For which there is a need for sustainable management of resources like land and water.The government is framing its policies and regulations with the main objectives of raising the productivity of in-puts by providing farmers with HYV seeds at low prices and introducing new irrigation projects, for protecting the interest of underprivileged agriculturists by proving them with subsidized food access and offering them MSP for their produce, and for enhancing cropping by multi-cropping and inter-cropping practices. Now on one hand where these policies are applaud able, on the other hand, they are not enough to erase the farmer's distress. There is still a need for increased investment in the agricul-tural sector and a lot more needs to be done to support farmers financially.These efforts by the government are bearing fruits and offering some comfort to the farmers. The MSP en-FDr Malini Saba, Founder & Chairman
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