Agriculture & Forestry

Agricultural biotechnology is an advanced technology that allows plant breeders to make precise genetic changes to impart beneficial traits to the crop plants we rely on for food and fiber.

For centuries farmers and plant breeders have labored to improve crop plants. Traditional breeding methods include selecting and sowing the seeds from the strongest, most desirable plants to produce the next generation of crops. By selecting and breeding plants with characteristics such as higher yield, resistance to pests and hardiness, early farmers dramatically changed the genetic make-up of crop plants long before the science of genetics was understood. As a result, most of today's crop plants bear little resemblance to their wild ancestors.

The tools of modern biotechnology allow plant breeders to select genes that produce beneficial traits and move them from one organism to another. This process is far more precise and selective than crossbreeding, which involves the transfer of tens of thousands of genes, and provided plant developers with a more detailed knowledge of the changes being made.

This Act empowers farmers to freely sell their produce from farm gate directly to the buyers/exporters/processors/retailers who are offering better prices as alternative to APMC Markets without paying any market fee in trade area. It will help to reduce transportation cost of farmers produce from the farm gate to the mandis. It will also help in reducing post-harvest losses. The farmers can now store their produce in warehouses after harvest and sell it directly from such warehouses at appropriate time at suitable prices without bringing the produce to APMC Markets for selling.

Corporate companies are not included in the definition of farmer in this Act. Only Farmer Producers Organizations (FPOs), which are registered under any law, are included under the definition of farmer apart from individual farmers.

• An FPO or an agricultural co-operative society shall make payment to the farmer immediately after sale, but not later than fourteen days from the date of aggregation or purchase subject to the condition that the receipt of delivery shall be given to the farmer on the same day.
• When FPO aggregates or buys the scheduled farmers’ produce from farmer in the trade area and sells such produce in raw form itself, it shall make the payment immediately after such sale, but not later than three days from the date of aggregation or purchase, if procedurally so required, subject to the condition that the receipt of delivery shall be given to the farmer on the same day.