By IANS,
New Delhi : Farm mechanisation must be given priority to attain the projected demand of 280 million tonnes of food grains by 2020-21, union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said Wednesday.
He told the parliamentary consultative committee attached to his ministry that farm power availability has to be scaled up to at least two KW per hectare by 2016-17.
“Indian agriculture is dominated by small and marginal farmers with small landholdings and weak economic status. This renders single ownership of many high-value agricultural machinery and equipments such as tractors economically unviable,” Pawar said.
“Though we are witnessing considerable progress in farm mechanisation, its spread across the country still remains uneven. Our farm power availability is much lower than countries such as Korea, Japan and the US,” he added.