Centre to come up with agriculture income insurance scheme

Some basic info to understand this news better:

• Agriculture in India is highly susceptible to risks like droughts and floods. It is necessary to protect the farmers from natural calamities and ensure their credit eligibility for the next season. For this purpose, the Government of India introduced many agricultural schemes throughout the country.
• The Government of India experimented with a “Comprehensive Crop Insurance Scheme which Failed” The Government then introduced in 1999-2000, a new scheme titled “National Agricultural Insurance Scheme” (NAIS) or “Rashtriya Krishi Bima Yojana” (RKBY). NAIS envisages coverage of all food crops (cereals and pulses), oilseeds, horticultural and commercial crops. It covers all farmers, both loanees and non-loanees, under the scheme.

Now, the news:

•  The Centre will soon come up with an overhauled version of agriculture insurance scheme, which would be termed ‘Agriculture Income Insurance Scheme’ to ensure minimum income to farmers in case of crop loss.
• The government would soon shell out a considerable fund for Rs 50,000 per hectare under newly floated “Traditional Agriculture Development Scheme.”
• The Central government would also provide fund for soil health management to all states, Singh added.
• Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan suggested formation of a corpus known as “Kisan Kalyan Kosh’ (Farmers Welfare Fund) in case the Centre delayed on the proposed alternative crop insurance scheme.”Each year, the state government shells out Rs 2,000-3,000 crore to mitigate losses under crop loss scheme or otherwise,” Chouhan said, adding, “the Centre and the state government would contribute to this fund.”
• Chouhan stressed that the scheme must be based on revenue-model instead of yield-based model. “To provide almost 100% cover to the farmers, we need to adopt revenue-based model of agriculture income insurance scheme, if launched,” he said.

Know more on this news topic:

• Agriculture Insurance Company of India Limited (AIC) offers yield-based and weather-based crop insurance programs in almost 500 districts of India. It covers almost 20 million farmers, making it the biggest crop insurer in the world in number of farmers served.
• AIC aims to provide insurance coverage and financial support to the farmers in the failure of any of the notified crop as a result of natural calamities, pests and diseases to restore their creditworthiness for the ensuing season; to encourage the fanners to adopt progressive farming practices, high value in-puts and higher technology; to help stabilize farm incomes, particularly in disaster years.