Agriculture Ministry – Artifex.News

Expedite work on farmer IDs, ensure supply of fertilisers: Agriculture Minister to officials

admin — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 17:19:00 +0000

Union Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan speaks in Lok Sabha during the second part of the Budget Session of Parliament, in New Delhi. Photo: Sansad TV/ANI Video Grab

Reviewing the impact of the war in West Asia on India’s farm sector, Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan asked officials on Wednesday (March 25, 2026) to ensure an equitable and uninterrupted supply of fertilisers. He directed the officials to expedite the work on “farmer IDs” to make the fertiliser distribution system transparent.

Mr. Chouhan will meet Chief Ministers and Agriculture Ministers of States on the completion of the project. The government is targeting to provide digital IDs for 11 crore farmers by 2026-27, and as of November 2025, more than 7.63 crore IDs have been generated, including 1.93 crore IDs for women farmers.

The Agriculture Ministry, in a statement, said the primary objective of the meeting was to safeguard the interests of the Indian agricultural sector and its farmers amid current global instability, while ensuring strategic preparedness for the upcoming kharif season. The Minister asked the officers to play a proactive role during times of crisis.

The Minister issued instructions to take action against those engaging in the black marketing of fertilisers and seeds by taking advantage of the global crisis. The availability of agro-chemicals and essential gases required for drying seed was also reviewed at the meeting. To ensure that there is no shortage of packaging materials, particularly for milk and agricultural produce, Mr. Chouhan said the Ministry had issued directives to coordinate with the Petroleum Ministry and other relevant departments.

The meeting issued instructions to take action against those engaging in the black market for fertilisers and seeds by taking advantage of the global crisis. The meeting reviewed the availability of agrochemicals and the essential gases required for drying seeds. To ensure that there is no shortage of packaging materials, particularly for milk and other agricultural products, Mr. Chouhan stated that the Ministry has issued directives to coordinate with the Ministry of Petroleum and other relevant departments. The Ministry has established a ‘Special Cell’ for round-the-clock monitoring of the agricultural sector. “This cell will submit a weekly report to the Union Agriculture Minister regarding the availability of fertilizers, seeds and pesticides,” the Ministry added.

Earlier, the Fertiliser Ministry had maintained that it had adequate stocks of fertilisers for the kharif season. The Ministry said there was a stock of 62 lakh tonnes of urea, 25 lakh tonnes of di-ammonium phosphate, and 56 lakh tonnes of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium fertilisers for the kharif season. The Ministry maintained that the stock of fertilizers was higher than that during the corresponding period last year.

Published – March 25, 2026 10:48 pm IST

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Centre seeks public comments on draft Pesticides Management Bill to replace 1968 Act

admin — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 16:25:00 +0000

Ongole, Andhra Pradesh, 05/12/2025: Due to the heavy rains caused by Cyclone Ditwash, the farmer is spraying pesticides with his tractor to prevent damage to the crops at Chintala village near Ongole on Friday. Photo:KOMMURI SRINIVAS / The Hindu
| Photo Credit: KOMMURI SRINIVAS

The Agriculture Ministry on Wednesday (January 7, 2026) released the draft Pesticides Management Bill, 2025, seeking public comments on the legislation that aims to replace the 57-year-old Insecticides Act, 1968, and the Insecticides Rules, 1971, with enhanced penalties for violations.

The Ministry has invited feedback from all stakeholders by February 4, 2026, to refine the legislation before it is introduced in Parliament, according to a statement.

Reform measures

The proposed farmer-centric legislation introduces several reform measures, including provisions for transparency and traceability to improve services to farmers.

The bill incorporates digital methods and technology to streamline processes while imposing stricter controls on spurious pesticides through higher penalties.

Key features of the draft bill include mandatory accreditation of testing laboratories to ensure quality pesticides reach farmers, and provisions for compounding of offences with enhanced penalties to be defined by State-level authorities.

Striking a balance

The legislation seeks to balance ease of living for farmers with ease of doing business for industry stakeholders.

The amendments also aim to strengthen administrative control over and management of pesticides across the country.

As part of pre-legislative consultation, the draft bill is available on the Ministry’s website, https://agriwelfare.gov.in.

Stakeholders and members of the public can submit comments and suggestions in MS Word or PDF format through e-mails to pp1.pesticides@gov.in, rajbir.yadava@gov.in, or jyoti.uttam@gov.in.

Ankur Aggarwal, chairman, CropLife India, said, “We are currently in the process of examining the draft Pesticides Management Bill 2025 (revised 2020 bill). We shall arrive at a consolidated view of the industry and share a detailed response in due course.”

Published – January 07, 2026 09:55 pm IST

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67% drop in PM-Kisan payout in 3 years: RTI reply

admin — Sat, 19 Nov 2022 22:30:00 +0000

File.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The number of farmers who received the 11th instalment of funds from the Prime Minister’s Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) has fallen by 67%, according to the Agriculture Ministry’s response to a Right to Information query from activist Kanhaiya Kumar. PM-KISAN is a flagship Central scheme launched in 2019 to pay eligible farmer families ₹6,000 per year in three instalments of ₹2,000 each.

The Agriculture Ministry’s instalment-wise payment success report showed that only 3.87 crore farmers recieved the 11th instalment of ₹2,000 in their accounts in May-June 2022. This is a sharp drop from the 11.84 crore farmers who recieved the first instalment back in February 2019, just before the Lok Sabha elections. The latest 12th instalment was disbursed in October 2022.

Read | The farmer’s jigsaw: movement fails to impact outcome in U.P.

From 11.84 crore farmers in the first instalment, the trend of decrease started from the sixth instalment which was received by 9.87 crore farmers. The seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth instalments were received by 9.30, 8.59, 7.66 and 6.34 crore people respectively.

The Ministry did not respond to The Hindu’s queries on why the number of beneficiaries has declined so sharply.

The data revealed that in Andhra Pradesh, the number of beneficiaries came down from 55.68 lakh to 28.2 lakh. In Bihar, the number of beneficiaries reached seven lakh from 83 lakh, while in Chhattisgarh, just two lakh farmers received the eleventh instalment, instead of 37 lakh people who got the amount in the first instalment.

In poll-bound Gujarat, 63.13 lakh farmers got the amount in 2019 and in 2022, only 28.41 lakh farmers benefited by the scheme. In Haryana, 19.73 lakh farmers received the first instalment and 11.59 lakh farmers got the 11^th instalment. In Maharashtra, the number came down from 1.09 crore in 2019 to 37.51 lakh in 2022. In Madhya Pradesh, while 88.63 lakh farmers received the help in 2019, just 12,053 of them received the amount in 2022. In Meghalaya, 627 farmers got it in 2022 against 1.95 lakh farmers in 2019. In Punjab, the number decreased to 11.31 lakh from 23.34 lakh.

In Uttar Pradesh, 2.6 crore farmers availed the aid in 2019, and it decreased by half to 1.26 crore in 2022. In West Bengal, according to the data, 45.63 lakh farmers received the amount in 2019 and no farmers got the money since the sixth instalment. The State government had raised this matter with Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar.

In Assam, the number of people who received the payment came down from 28.79 lakh to 2.54 lakh. In Chandigarh, just three people got the amount in May-June 2022. In Delhi, the number came down to 2,065 from 16,513. In Himachal Pradesh too, the number came down by half from 9.86 lakh to 5.43 lakh. In Jammu and Kashmir, the beneficiaries who received the payment was 5.61 lakh from 12.07 lakh in 2019. In Jharkhand, 4.17 lakh farmers got the money in May-June. In 2019, 27.07 lakh people received the amount. In BJP-ruled Karnataka, the number came down from 55.61 lakh to 2.58 lakh. In Kerala, 24.23 lakh beneficiaries received the payment in 2022 against 36.99 lakh in 2019. Similarly in Odisha, 7.05 lakh farmers got the payment in 2022 while in 2019, the number was 39.20 lakh. In Tamil Nadu, 23.04 farmers received the money in 2022 and 46.8 lakh got the amount in 2019. In Telangana, 24.32 lakh people received payment in 2022 and for the first instalment was received by 39.10 lakh farmers. In Tripura too, the number has come down by half.

All India Kisan Sabha president Ashok Dhawale termed the data as “very shocking”. “Two thirds of the farmers have not received the payment according to this data in 2022. There is no logical reason for why such a decrease in the number of beneficiaries. It shows that the Centre is trying to slowly wind up this scheme. This scheme is not at all a substitute for the legally guaranteed MSP. This scheme was another jumla to skirt the real issues the farmers are facing,” Dr. Dhawale said.

The Ministry said no money was transferred to any fraud beneficiary under the PM-KISAN scheme, adding that the benefits have been transferred directly into bank accounts only after the receipt of 100% error free data of farmers from States, which is validated through Aadhaar or the Public Financial Management System (PFMS) database.

The government had earlier said that so far, eligible farmer families have received benefit of more than ₹2 lakh crore under the scheme through 11 instalments. “Of this, ₹1.6 lakh crore has been transferred during the COVID-19 pandemic period. With the 12th instalment to be released by Prime Minister on October 17, the total amount transferred to the beneficiaries is expected to cross well over ₹2.16 lakh crore,” a recent release said.

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Centre projects record production of rice

admin — Wed, 17 Aug 2022 08:20:31 +0000

While the estimate of foodgrains production is 315.72 million tonnes, the production of rice is expected at 130.29 million tonnes. File
| Photo Credit: The Hindu

The Union Agriculture Ministry released on August 17 the fourth advance estimates of production of major agricultural crops for 2021-22. The Ministry said the production of foodgrains in the country is estimated at 315.72 million tonnes which is higher by 4.98 million tonnes than 2020-21.

Also read | A critical look at Tamil Nadu as a rice-providing State

A government release said the production during 2021-22 is higher by 25 million tonnes than the previous five years’ (2016-17 to 2020-21) average production of foodgrains. “Record production is estimated of rice, maize, gram, pulses, rapeseed and mustard, oilseeds and sugarcane,” it said. Union Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said the record production of so many crops is the result of the farmer-friendly policies of the Centre and the hard work of the farmers and the diligence of the scientists.

While the estimate of foodgrains production is 315.72 million tonnes, the production of rice is expected at 130.29 million tonnes, which, according to the Centre, is a record. Wheat production could touch 106.84 million tonnes and for nutri/coarse cereals it could be 50.90 million tonnes.

“Total production of Rice during 2021-22 is estimated at record 130.29 million tonnes. It is higher by 13.85 million tonnes than the last five years’ average production of 116.44 million tonnes. Production of Wheat during 2021-22 is estimated at 106.84 million tonnes. It is higher by 2.96 million tonnes than the last five years’ average wheat production of 103.88 million tonnes,” the release said.

“The assessment of production of various crops is based on the data received from States and validated with information available from other sources,” the Ministry said.

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