Agriculture is the core of India’s developmental goals and exports are the key to reforming the agriculture sector said Commerce Secretary, Anup Wadhawan.

Speaking in his inaugural address at the 2nd National Workshop on the implementation of the Agri Export Policy (AEP) and cluster development in New Delhi, he said it is the States/ Union Territories (UTs) that will have to strengthen their institutional mechanisms for putting in place the AEP and development of clusters added Commerce Secretary.

He further said that this is an opportunity for the States/ UTs to formulate a comprehensive plan, covering all key areas of the AEP, across all sectors in agriculture like horticulture, fisheries, animal husbandry, dairying, food processing, floriculture and water shed development.

The institutional framework of the AEP must be outcome oriented and all States/ UTs must provide a budget for it added Commerce Secretary.

The Commerce Secretary emphasised that the best agronomic practices in all the sectors of agriculture must be followed in the State AEP because quality of India’s agri products should never be compromised.

States/ UTs should not only concentrate on quantitative output of agri produce but be extremely meticulous about the quality.

Best practices must be followed at every step so that there is no compromise whatsoever in the quality of India’s agri products stressed Commerce Secretary.

He further said that the AEP must have a decentralised focus that is built up from the cluster level to the district and the state level plan and the policy must link up with all schemes of Government of India across all Ministries and Departments and project the vision for the agriculture sector for the next five years.

APEDA organized the 2nd workshop with all States/ UTs in order to assess the progress made by them for the implementation of the AEP and development of agri clusters in districts.

Twenty-seven States and one UT attended the workshop today where Chairman APEDA spelt out the expectations from State Governments/ UTs for successful implementation of AEP so that farmers income may double and India’s agri export may reach the target of USD 60 billion by 2022.

The Chairman, APEDA informed that States/ UTs must put in place the state agri export action plan, set up state level export monitoring committee, designate a nodal agency for agri export, identify agri clusters, set up district agri export action plan, promote farmer producer organization (FPOs) and farmer producer cooperatives (FPCs) identify infrastructure and logistics gap.

He informed that around 15 States have put in place the nodal agency, nodal officer, state level monitoring committee and cluster facilitation cell for the implementation of the AEP.