Agriculture and allied sectors have a lot of potentials to generate employment opportunities and bring about faster economic dividends, said Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal.
He further stressed on the need to provide market linkage to farmers while assuring them of a minimum guaranteed price for their produce.
“Lack of market linkage could de-motivate the farmers, especially young generation farmers,” he added.
“Therefore, it is necessary to make sure farmers’ products were not wasted in the farms,” he added.
Sonowal was speaking at a meeting with the recently constituted economic advisory committee on Thursday.
The committee has been formed under the chairmanship of retired IAS officer Subhas Das.
The committee has been formed by the CM seeking economic recommendations and suggestions to re-energise the state’s economy that has been slowed down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sonowal called on the committee to provide recommendations to streamline production-procurement-marketing chain so that a roadmap can be prepared for achieving market sustainability for the farmers.
Augmentation of cold storage and other such facilities was the need of the hour and the committee must put forward their suggestions in this regard, he said.
Saying that every crisis brings opportunity, Sonowal stressed on the need to make the state self-reliant in sectors such as fisheries, livestock, fruit cultivation, dairy farming etc. through strategic interventions.
He also said that youths of the state returning from outside must be empowered to live a life of dignity through self-employment opportunities and agriculture and its allied sectors can play a very important role in this.