The Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers’ Welfare, Government of India is taking several measures to facilitate the farmers and farming activities at field level during the lockdown period. The updated status of activities is given below:
The “Kisan Rath” App launched in mid-April is turning out to be big hit with more than 80 thousand farmers and 70 thousand traders registering on this App in the very first week of its launch.
The App aims to facilitate farmers and traders in identifying right mode of transportation for movement of farm produce ranging from food grain (cereal, coarse cereal, pulses etc), Fruits & Vegetables, oil seeds, spices, fiber crops, flowers, bamboo, log & minor forest produce, coconuts etc.
Due to complete lockdown, all the wholesale mandis were closed on March 25. There are 2587 Principal/Main agricultural Markets available in India, out of which 1091 markets were functional on 26.03.2020. As on 23.04.2020, 2067 markets were made functional.
The procurement of Pulses & Oilseeds on MSP is currently in progress in twenty (20) States. A quantity of 1,79,852.21 MT of Pulses and 1,64,195.14 MT of Oilseeds has been procured by NAFED and FCI valued at Rs 1605.43 Crores through which 2,05,869 farmers have been benefited, claimed a release from the Ministry.