Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the release of the autobiography of Dr Balasaheb Vikhe Patil on Tuesday said that the opportunities are being created today to lead farmers towards entrepreneurship and make them entrepreneurs.
Mentioning the contribution of Dr Balasaheb Vikhe Patil in educating farmers, PM Modi said, “Vikhe Patil ji understood the importance of education in farming in the village. Today opportunities are being created to lead farmers towards entrepreneurship and make them entrepreneurs.”
“After independence when the country did not have enough food to feed, the priority of the government was how to increase the productivity of the crop. But in this concern for productivity, the focus was not given towards the profitability of the farmer. He said the country is now emphasizing on increasing the income of the farmer and has made constant efforts in this direction, such as the decision to increase MSP, neem coating of urea and better crop insurance. Due to initiatives like PM-Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana, farmers now do not have to depend on others for small expenses. Moreover, unprecedented work has been done on augmenting infrastructure such as cold chains, mega food parks and agro-processing infrastructure,” PM added.
Referring to Balasaheb Vikhe Patil’s emphasis on the need to preserve the traditional knowledge of farming, wherein farming was done according to the natural conditions, the PM said, “We must preserve that knowledge and must also combine new and old methods in agriculture. In sugarcane crop, both new and old ways of farming are used. Now industries are being set up to extract sugar as well as ethanol from sugarcane.”
PM Modi released the autobiography of Dr Balasaheb Vikhe Patil titled ‘Deh Vechwa Karani’ today through video conferencing. He renamed Pravara Rural Education Society as ‘Loknete Dr. Balasaheb Vikhe Patil Pravara Rural Education Society’.
