New Delhi: Coining a new term “Rurban” (rural-urban) Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday unveiled roadmap for putting agriculture on high gro-wth trajectory with intensive use of technology in farming to scale up land productivity.
The Prime Minister said that villages could bec-ome “Rurban (rural-urb-an)” with broadband ser-vice and other modern facilities so that lives of the people change for th-eir better in places where they live.
Illustrating how his government would impleme-nt claims made in the Pre-sident’s speech, Mr Modi suggested “soil health card” and “lab to land” as ways to transform agricultural productivity.
Explaining his roadmap for reviving the rural economy, the Prime Minister said that the villages could incubate agro-industries and become centre for value addition in farm products.
Throwing a challenge to agricultural scientists, Mr Modi said that though the sugar content has go-ne up in sugarcane, the protein content has not improved in pulses.
Seeking to bring agricu-ltural varsities close to farms, Mr Modi said, “We need to bring lab to farm fields. Why can’t agricultural university students work in farms during vacation and labs be used for soil testing for a holistic turnaround in the farm sector.”
