Tomar asks co-operative societies to help farmers become self-reliant

The 45 new training modules of Sahakar Pragya of the National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) will impart training to primary cooperative societies in rural areas along with Lakshmanrao Inamdar National Cooperative Research and Development Academy (LINAC), an official statement said.

Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Tuesday asked co-operative societies to help farmers become self-reliant. The minister was speaking after unveiling Sahakar Pragya. The 45 new training modules of Sahakar Pragya of the National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) will impart training to primary cooperative societies in rural areas along with Lakshmanrao Inamdar National Cooperative Research and Development Academy (LINAC), an official statement said. Sahakar Pragya embodies enhancing NCDC's training capacity by 18-folds through an elaborate network of 18 regional training centres by the LINAC set up and fully funded by NCDC, it added

Tomar called upon the co-operative sector to play a role in making the village-poor-farmers 'Aatmanirbhar'. The minister said that the country has a huge network of over 8.50 lakh co-operative societies with about 290 million members and around 94 per cent of the farmers in India are member of at least one co-operative society. He said that cooperatives have a major role in 'Aatmanirbhar Bharat' as they lend strength to farmers by minimising risks in agriculture sector and also act as shield against exploitation by unscrupulous traders. The minister said that there are more than 2.53 lakh gram panchayats in the country, through which the government is working to ensure that every household has access to basic amenities like toilets, electricity, water, cooking gas, etc. The government is focusing on developing facilities like cold storage at village level, so that farmers, especially small and marginal ones, are not forced to sell their produce at low prices, he said. Tomar said the NCDC has emerged as a financial powerhouse giving the client co-operatives a wide range of products and services. So far, NCDC has advanced loans to the tunes of Rs 1.58 lakh crore to cooperative societies of various categories across the country. NCDC has been created for the purpose of planning and promoting programmes for the production, processing, marketing, storage, export and import of agricultural produce, foodstuffs, industrial goods, livestock, certain other commodities and services like hospital and healthcare and education etc on cooperative principles. It extends financial assistance to cooperatives at all the three tiers, primary, district and apex/multi-state, the statement said.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)