The budget 2018-19 has offered a series of sops to farmers by increasing budget allocation in agriculture sector to Rs 58080 crore from Rs 51576 crore, and almost doubling the allocation for the food processing industry.

The main announcement came from Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his budget speech when he announced minimum support price (MSP) for all “unannounced crops of Kharif at least 50% more than the production cost”.

NITI Aayog in consultation with Central and state governments would put in place a foolproof mechanism so that farmers would get adequate price for their produce, the minister announced without elaborating on where the money would come to procure crop produce at the new MSP.

Jaitley also proposed to make an institutional mechanism for price and demand forecasting. “With this farmers will be able to take timely decisions about which crop and in how much quantity it would be profitable,” he said.

The government also proposed to launch an “Operation Green” to address volatility of perishable commodities mainly onions and potatoes on the lines of ‘Operation flood’ and made a provision of Rs 500 crore for it. The government also proposed income tax exemption to farmer producer companies with less than Rs 100 crore turnover for the next five years to encourage post harvest value addition in agriculture.
The government has also proposed to double allocation for the Ministry of Food Processing from Rs 715 crore to Rs 1400 crore giving Rs 1313 crore for the new flagship programme Pradhan Mantri Kisan Sampada Yojana to boost investment in food processing sector.

The Finance Minister proposed Kisan Credit Cards to animal husbandry and fisheries sectors, which is going to help small and marginal farmers going for animal husbandry and fisheries sector. Agriculture credit allocation has been increased from Rs 10 lakh crore (2017-18) to Rs 11 lakh crores (2018-19).

He proposed Rs 10,000 crore to set up Fisheries and Aquaculture Infrastructure Development Fund (FAIDF) and Animal Husbandry Infrastructure Development Fund (AHIDF) for financing infrastructure requirements of the animal husbandry sector.

The Finance Minister proposed Rs 1290 crore for Restructured National Bamboo Mission to complete bamboo value chain and promote bamboo sector in a holistic manner. The Bamboo Mission would mainly help North Eastern states to establish bamboo-related small industries and generate new employment in the region.

As a measure to tackle air pollution in NCR region, the budget proposed subsidised machinery required for in-situ management of crop residue. The government has also suggested new reforms in agriculture market with the objective to provide right value of the yields to the farmers and announced to develop 22000 rural haats and 585 AMC markets.