In a major push for doubling the farmer‘s income and improve the Agriculture export, Eight states including Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Karnataka have finalized the State Action Plan. Many States have also nominated Nodal agency and Nodal officer. Commerce and Industry Ministry has said in a statement, that other States are at different stages of finalization of the action plan.
The Agri Export Policy was announced last year with an objective of doubling the export and ensuring doubling of farmers’ income. In order to achieve this objective, Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority has been adopting a focused approach for ensuring greater involvement of the State governments for effective implementation of Agri Export Policy.
“Throughout the year APEDA held a series of meetings with the State Government officials and other stakeholders for the preparation of State Action Plan which included all essential components like production clusters, capacity building, infrastructure and logistics and R & D and budget requirements for the implementation of AEP” the Ministry said.
Several rounds of discussions were also held with Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, Department of Animal Husbandry & Dairying, Ministry of Food Processing Industries and other agencies under Line Ministries for seeking the inputs for formulating a strategy to increase exports and address the existing bottlenecks in the trade.
State level Monitoring Committees have been formed in many of the States. Cluster visits have been made by APEDA Nodal officers to the product cluster, it added.
The roadmap for cluster development in the clusters notified under AEP was prepared to address the identified interventions during the cluster visits.
APEDA has organised a number of seminars and meetings for the implementation of Agri Export Policy throughout the year. A workshop on the role of state nodal agencies in agriculture exports was organised in New Delhi on 3rd September, 2019 where majority of the states actively participated for brainstorming on implementation of AEP in States.
An MoU was signed with National Cooperative Development Corporation to include Co-operatives for their active role in AEP.
A Farmer Connect Portal has also been set up by APEDA on its website for providing a platform for Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) and Farmer Producer Companies (FPCs) to interact with exporters. Over 800 FPOs have been registered on the portal.
