Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Thursday said the government may soon prepare a vision document 2050 for the farm sector, while stressing on the need to improve crop productivity to meet domestic requirements and export to global markets.

Inaugurating a summit on Farm Machinery Technology organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Tractor and Mechanization Association (TMA) in Delhi, Tomar said agriculture production has increased substantially over the years thanks to the hard work of farmers and scientists, and government policies.

However, the country’s population will rise by 2050, and therefore there is a need to prepare a roadmap to meet the requirement of foodgrains and other farm products. “We should not rest on our laurels, rather we have to prepare a roadmap keeping in view the requirement of the population that will increase by 2050,” he said, adding there is also a need to plan for global requirements, with India’s growing global importance.

The minister said though yields in India have been improving, it should be compared with productivity in other major producing countries.

Tomar said technologies such as drones and micro-irrigation should be promotedas about 85 per cent of farmers have less than 2 hectares of land. He said kisan drones are being promoted, for which subsidies are being extended to various sections, including farmers, the SC-ST category, and women farmers. The Centre recently released crop-specific SOPs (standard operating procedure) for application of pesticides with drones.

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