Union Minister for Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare and Rural Development, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, chaired the 96th Annual General Meeting of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) at the Bharat Ratna C. Subramaniam Auditorium, National Agricultural Science Complex, New Delhi.
The meeting saw participation from over 18 Union and State Ministers, including key figures such as Union Minister of State for Agriculture Shri Bhagirath Choudhary, Minister for Science & Technology Dr. Jitendra Singh, and various State Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Ministers from Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, and Odisha.
The minister emphasised that crop-wise and state-specific action plans will be formulated. He stated that the series of crop-specific meetings has already begun. A comprehensive meeting on soybean was held in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. Special meetings will also be organized on cotton, sugarcane, and other crops. A conference on cotton will be held in Coimbatore on July 11, where discussions will focus on making the Cotton Mission more effective.
Reiterating his personal commitment, he shared that he is visiting farms across the country—from saffron fields in Kashmir to sugarcane plantations in Uttar Pradesh and areca nut farms in Karnataka—to gain ground-level insights for better policy planning.
Dr. M.L. Jat, Secretary (DARE) and Director General (ICAR), presented ICAR’s achievements and formally submitted the 2024–2025 Annual Report for adoption. Puneet Agarwal, Additional Secretary (DARE) and Financial Advisor (ICAR), shared the financial accounts and Auditor’s Report for 2023–2024, which was also adopted. Additionally, four ICAR publications were released during the session.
Ministers expressed collective satisfaction with progress in food grain production and reaffirmed their commitment to collaborative efforts for farmers’ welfare and agricultural growth.
During the meeting, Chouhan proposed the establishment of “Crop Medicine Centres” modeled after Jan Aushadhi Kendras. He urged State Ministers to offer input on retaining effective schemes, discontinuing obsolete ones, and designing new initiatives, stressing the need to assess whether current schemes truly benefit farmers.
Acknowledging that agriculture is a State subject, he emphasized the critical importance of Centre-State collaboration. He praised the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, under whom India has significantly increased its food grain output—from once depending on poor-quality wheat imports to now becoming a major exporter.
The Minister congratulated ICAR scientists on their contributions but also pointed out existing challenges. He urged that the way forward should be shaped by findings from the Viksit Krishi Sankalp Abhiyan. He advocated for demand-driven, State-specific research focused on farmers’ actual needs, rather than bureaucratic checkboxes.
