It is not only in the country but Gujarat’s agricultural revolution is lauded across the globe. The reason for this is Gujarat has initiated sincere efforts to attain World-level development. The result of these efforts opens up new direction for developments and sets an example for others becoming an inspiration. Similar to this, Gujarat has taken novel initiative to hold “Vibrant Gujarat Global Agriculture Summit-2013”, on September 9 and 10, 2013. This summit will bring home the vast knowledge from the field of agriculture to Gujarat and for its farmers.
Chief Minister Mr. Narendra Modi has given “Lab to Land”, a mantra to achieve thorough success in the field of agriculture, connecting its agricultural universities and its knowledge-resources to the farmlands of the state. For this, Mr. Modi has initiated annual programme named
Krushi Mahotsava. Gujarat has pioneered the initiative of soil health-card, which enable farmers to go for certain crops after fulfilling the required nutrients in the soil and in turn harvest a bumper crop. All these efforts have made sure that Gujarat’s Agriculture growth remains in double digit to what it was minus two few years down the line. This feat has touched so many across the World and even agriculture expert Dr. Swaminathan has praised this effort of Gujarat. Government of India’s Commission for Agriculture Cost of Production Policy’s president Dr. Ashok Gulati during his one of the meeting with chief minister Mr. Modi had termed Gujarat’s over 10% continuous agriculture growth as quite an exciting phenomena and is inspirational for other states.
Moreover, this concerted efforts involving all from agriculture sector has led to state’s annual agriculture income cross Rs. 1,00,000 crore as compared to Rs. 9,000 crore recorded few years ago. This was achieved because of Gujarat Government’s guidance, modern approach in agricultural techniques and sheer hard work of the farmers. And the figures of growth rate speak about the achievement of last one decade. From 1991, sowing area of 106 lakh hectares and agriculture produce of 108 lakh metric tonnes, which was increased to 1.8 lakh hectares and 155 lakh metric tonnes respectively. Thus the particular decade could see an increase of only 2 lakh hectares in sowing area and increase of 47 lakh metric tonnes in agriculture produce. Because of the visionary leadership of Mr. Modi, state’s agriculture growth has found new direction which ultimately resulted into total sowing area of 145 lakh hectares and agriculture produce become 241 lakh metric tonnes. The good governance by the state government has effected an increase of 37 lakh hectares in sowing area and agriculture produce add another 86 lakh metric tonnes to the total tally.
Gujarat has been a leader in the field of agriculture. It produces 30% of India’s total ground-nut production, 80% of country’s castor and it is no.1 producer of cumin. Around 80% of onion dehydration plants are located in Gujarat. While it contributes 33% of country’s total cotton produce and 50% of India’s cotton exports. Year 2012-13 saw record production of 86 lakh bales of cotton and for last ten years it has been able to grow wheat production by 5 fold. In 2010-11, Gujarat produced total food grain worth 100 lakh metric tonnes and in next year it produced even higher quantity of food grain for which the Central Government conferred Gujarat with “Krishi Karman Commendation Award”. Gujarat has successfully converted over 7 lakh hectares of area for applying modern farming techniques using micro irrigation system.
The upcoming summit is aimed at bringing international standard of farming techniques, technologies, innovations, machineries and the knowledge of the field to the state’s farmers. The summit will take place for two days, September 9-10 this year. On this occasion a mega exhibition is planned where over 200 companies from 15 countries will showcase their expertise and knowledge in different domain of the agriculture sector. Also it will see a
Kisan Panchayat being held in presence of Chief Minister Mr. Modi and around 4,000 farmers from the state and about 5,000 farmers from other states are expected to participate in the summit. Apart from sessions and discussions on different subject areas, the summit will host country seminars from Israel, Netherlands and Denmark. Gujarat has taken a lead by this initiative for the all-round agriculture development of the country and as Chief Minister Mr. Modi says that “India First”, this is Gujarat’s
yagya- for welfare and service of the countrymen.
