Prime Minister Narendra Modi emphasised on Friday the need to make India self-sufficient not just in rice and wheat cultivation but other crops too. He called for more private innovation in agriculture to attract youngsters.

In his second webinar address on the budget with the theme ‘agriculture and cooperatives‘, the PM said the agriculture budget has seen an impressive rise from ₹25,000 crore in 2014 to ₹1.25 lakh crore today.

“Today India is exporting many types of agricultural products,” the PM said as he shed light on the efforts of the government to make domestic and international markets accessible to farmers. However, the country’s goal should be to ensure self-sufficiency or export is not limited only to rice or wheat, he added.

Highlighting the imports in the agricultural sector, the PM gave examples of expenditures of ₹17,000 crore in 2021-22 for import of pulses, ₹25,000 crore for import of Value-Added Food Products and ₹1.5 lakh crore on import of edible oils. He further added that the sum of all agricultural imports was about ₹2 lakh crore.

The PM also said that complete development cannot be achieved until the challenges related to the agriculture sector are eliminated. He observed that private innovation and investment are keeping a distance from this sector which leads to low participation of youths in the agricultural sector compared to the other sectors. He stated that various announcements have been made in this year’s budget to fill this lacuna.

On the potential in the cooperative sector, the PM said, “A new revolution is taking place in the cooperative sector of India.” A separate ministry of cooperation was formed by this government. Cooperatives have now spread across the country and are no longer confined to a few states, the PM. Dairy and fisheries now have cooperatives which will benefit farmers.