Farming must go on: Lockdown relaxations & video-conf mooted

The Union Government has granted a slew of exemptions and relaxations for Agriculture and Allied sectors with respect to the 21-day lockdown over the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak so as to ensure that the farmers do not suffer from any adverse fall out. In this regard, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs has issued the 4th Addendum to its notification invoking the Disaster Management Act.

As per the Addendum, shops of Agricultural machinery, its spare parts (including its supply chain) & repairs and shops for truck repairs on highways, preferably at fuel pumps, can remain open in order to facilitate transportation of farm produce. Besides, the tea industry, including plantations can function with a maximum of 50% workers.

The Home Ministry has underlined that the head of the organization/establishment will ensure the practice of social distancing norms and proper hygiene. The District authorities have been directed to ensure strict enforcement of the orders.

For ensuring that the farmers do not suffer from any adverse fall out during the lockdown period, the Department of Agriculture Cooperation and Farmers Welfare, Government of India is taking several measures for smooth harvesting of Rabi Crop and sowing of summer crops.

Video conference was conducted with all States and Insurance companies to review the payment of claims, status of Conduct of CCEs for Rabi 2019-20 crops, crop loss survey and implementation of Smart Sampling Technique.

For facilitating farm insurance, letters issued to all States to issue passes to representatives of concerned Insurance companies for co-witnessing Crop Cutting Experiments and to relax the norms for conducting field level survey for intimation received for Post-Harvest crop losses due to unseasonal rainfall and hailstorm.

Phytosanitary certification for export consignments and Import releases of plant and plant products are continuing. From the date of lockdown i. e. 24.03.2020 to 02.04.2020, a total of 3776 PSCs have been issued for export consignments and 1074 import consignments have been released.

For providing support to horticulture crops necessary coordination is being done with growers, aggregators, wholesalers, mandi associations, State Horticulture Missions, for smooth transport of the commodities and to sort out all difficulties.

In the lockdown period, Kisan Call Centres at all 21 locations are being operated by diverting calls to individual mobile numbers of Farm Tele Advisors, who are now operating from homes. All 454 KCC seats are being operated daily between 6 AM to 10 PM. Call flow is about 15,000 to 20,000 per day.