The Union Minister of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare Shri Narendra Singh Tomar along with Ministers of State, Shri Parshottam Rupala and Shri Kailash Choudhary discussed with senior officers on various actions to be taken by the Department of Agriculture, Cooperation & Farmers’ Welfare for business continuity and ensuring that farmers and agricultural operations are not inconvenienced in this critical time. Following decisions were taken:

• In order to ensure the uninterrupted supply of agricultural machinery to the farmers under subsidy programmes, the Government has exempted random selection of test samples, subsequent batch testing after the expiry validity of test reports, updating of CMVR, COP & Type approval applicable to Tractors, Power Tillers, Combine Harvesters and other self propelled agricultural machinery till 31.12.2020. Testing of tractors as per revised BIS Standard IS 12207-2019 and Implementation of new technical critical specifications of 51 agricultural machinery has also been deferred till 31.12.2020.

• In order to facilitate the Seed sector during lockdown period, the Government has agreed to extend the validity of license of Seed dealers which are expired or going to be expired till 30.09.2020.

• It has also been decided to extend the validity of import permissions till September 2020 after consideration of the requirement of seed/planting material of the importing parties.

• Under Plant Quarantine system, it has been decided to extend the validity of all pack-houses, processing units and treatment facilities whose validity is expiring up to 30th June 2020 for a period of one year without physical inspection of such facility through a simplified procedure to facilitate export of agriculture products.

Besides, the Department has taken several other measures to facilitate the farmers and farming activities at field level during the lockdown period. The updated status is given below:

Union Agriculture Minister Shri Narendra Singh Tomar launched “Kisan Rath” App today to facilitate Farmers and Traders in identifying right mode of transportation for movement of farm produce ranging from food grain (cereal, coarse cereal, pulses etc), Fruits & Vegetables, oil seeds, spices, fiber crops, flowers, bamboo, log & minor forest produce, coconuts etc.
Railways introduced 65 routes for running 567 Parcel Specials (out of which 503 are time table parcel trains) to supply essential commodities at fast speed. These trains have transported 20,653 tonnes of consignments across the country.
Under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) Scheme during the lockdown period from 24.3.2020 till date, about 8.78 crore farmer families have been benefitted and an amount of Rs. 17,551 crore has been released so far.
Under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PM-GKY) about 88,234.56 MT of pulses has been issued to the States/UTs.