Government of India encouraging start-ups in the field of agriculture for enhancing income of farmers and providing employment opportunities to youth -Narendra Singh Tomar
KRC TIMES Desk
The Union Government accords very high priority to the agriculture sector. In order to contribute directly and indirectly to enhance the income of farmers by providing opportunities to them and to provide employment to youth, start-ups are being encouraged. Under the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, the innovation and agripreneurship component has been promoted.
Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, Narendra Singh Tomar stressed on the need to make agriculture competitive, provide handholding to agriculture-based activities and adopt new technology at the earliest. Emphasizing on increasing private investment in the field of agriculture, Tomar has drawn attention to the need for value addition and start-ups. His vision is to attract youth to agriculture and rejuvenate the sector.
In keeping with these initiatives of the Government of India to boost agriculture and allied activities and give an impetus to the rural economy, the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojna (RKVY) which aims at strengthening infrastructure in agriculture and allied areas, has been revamped.
Under the revamped scheme, a component Innovation and Agri-entrepreneurship Development programme has been launched in order to promote innovation and agripreneurship & startups by providing financial support and nurturing the incubation ecosystem. DAC&FW has selected 5 Knowledge Partners (KPs) as Centres of Excellence and 24 RKVY-RAFTAAR Agribusiness Incubators (R-ABIs) from across the country after a nation-wide advertisement and a rigorous selection process.
112 Startups selected by different knowledge partners and agribusiness incubators in the area of Agro-processing, Food Technology and Value addition will be funded in the first phase for a sum of Rs. 1185.90 lakh. This fund will be released in instalments.
These start-ups were trained for two months at 29 agribusiness incubation centres (KPs & RABIs) spread across India. These start-ups will lead to employment to youth. Besides, they, directly and indirectly, will contribute to enhancing the income of farmers by providing opportunities to them.
For more details on Agri-entrepreneurship, visit RKVY website https://rkvy.nic.in
