February 24

With an annual growth of four per cent in area and productivity of oilseeds, India could be self-reliant in edible oils by 2030, Davish Jain, Chairman, Soybean Processors Association of India (SOPA) said on Thursday, urging the Prime Minister to implement the National Mission on Edible Oils without delay with adequate financial outlays.

Jain was speaking at the webinar on Smart Agriculture-Strategies for Implementation, in which PM Narendra Modi spoke about the positive impact of Budget 2022 in agriculture sector.

Larger funding

Highlighting the need for substantial expenditure to increase oilseed production, SOPA Chairman said, “National Mission on Edible Oil is a great initiative, but it needs to be backed by a much larger corpus of funding, especially for major oilseed crops such as soyabean, rapeseed-mustard, groundnut and sunflower seed. Smaller budgets will not be adequate for greater impact especially in Lab-to-Land transfer of technology through extension services to oilseed farmers.”

“Set up a challenging task to increase area and productivity by just 4% per annum and we can be Atmanirbhar in edible oils by 2030,” Jain said. The breakout session of the webinar in which strategy to achieve self-reliance in edible oil was discussed was also joined Minister for Commerce and Industry, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution and Textiles Piyush Goyal.

Boosting soya cultivation, consumption

SOPA Chairman requested the government to encourage use of technology in agriculture and establish community based facilities for use by groups of farmers. Jain suggested a free or highly subsidised distribution of soyabean seeds to farmers in Haryana and Punjab to divert acreage by shifting from paddy and wheat cultivation to soyabean and rapeseed/mustard crops.

“Start a massive awareness programme for use of soya-based food in the public distribution system, for example fortified atta and also increase the allocation of funds for inclusion of soyabean in mid-day meal and other State-funded schemes. Current funding is too low. Help the industry to modernise and also set up more downstream soya-based product lines also as start-up facilities for making value-added production,” Jain said in his presentation.

SOPA, in a statement, said that in value terms, protein products contribute to about ₹50,000 crore and soya oil would be another ₹25,000 crore at current prices. Soyabean is a major kharif crop, and does not need a lot of water. Soyabean productivity in India is low, mainly because of poor extension and inadequate or improper input supply, particularly good quality seeds.

“A country whose farmers produce exportable surpluses in grains, sugar, cotton, etc can as well achieve ‘Atmanirbharta’ in oilseeds and edible oils. We can, rather we need to produce about 80-90 million tonnes of oilseeds provided enabling policy provisions to incentivise the farmers are implemented at the ground level,” he added.

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Published on February 24, 2022