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The Union Budget 2024 has failed to address the important issue of farmer crop losses yet again.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, while presenting the budget for the financial year 2024-25, allocated Rs 600 crore to enhance agricultural infrastructure. The amount is the same as the revised budget of the previous financial year i.e. 2023-24.
Additionally, an analysis of the budget documents by Down To Earth revealed not only a shortfall but also that funds allocated are being redirected for other purposes, rather than exclusively for agricultural infrastructure.
The documents showed that most of the funds allocated for the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund (AIF) in 2023-24 were diverted to the Prime Minister’s Gram Sadak Yojana.
The AIF scheme was launched at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, with the aim of reducing post-harvest losses, ensuring better prices for farmers, promoting innovations in agriculture, and attracting investment for agricultural infrastructure development.
Under this scheme, a total amount of Rs 1 lakh crore is supposed to be made available through banks and financial institutions by 2025-26.
On June 28, 2024, Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced that Rs 43,000 crore has been approved for 67,871 projects under the AIF.
Furthermore, investments totaling Rs 72,000 crore have been mobilised for these projects.
However, less than 50 per cent of the targeted Rs 1 lakh crore has been allocated so far.
Sitharaman had stated during her interim budget speech in February that value addition in the agriculture sector will increase farmers’ income, and other schemes will reduce post-harvest losses.
Experts agree that until the farmers are compensated for their crop losses, neither will their incomes grow nor will there be any progress in the Indian agriculture sector.
Hence, improving post-harvest storage capacities and augmenting the rudimentary agricultural infrastructure is crucial to reducing these losses.
According to the report of the committee on doubling farmers’ income, officially known as the Dalwai Committee, farmers in the country cannot sell all their produce in the market.
Horticulturists particularly suffer the most significant losses as they do not reap economic benefits. Farmers producing fruits cannot sell 34 per cent of their produce, while those growing vegetables cannot sell a whopping 44.6 per cent.
The major reasons for post-harvest losses include insufficient cold chain facilities, poor infrastructure, inadequate storage capacity, and transportation-related losses.
According to a report published by the Central Institute of Post Harvest Engineering and Technology (CIPHET), India recorded annual post-harvest losses amounting to Rs 92,650 crore in 2023.