With eyes firmly set on the impending general elections, Gujarat chief minister and BJP’s prime minister candidate in waiting, Narendra Modi  reached out to country’s farmers.

“It would have been better if such a summit was held in Delhi instead of Gandhinagar. But then never mind, after all this is my country and these are my farmers,” he said addressing a gathering of about 4000 farmers from 542 districts, at the Vibrant Gujarat Global agricultural summit at Gandhinagar.

Attacking the ruling UPA’s agricultural policies, he said there was no connect between the government's policies on agriculture and the research conducted in the field and universities. “Every department under the ministry of agriculture was working on its own without any connect with the other,” he said.
Patting his government on the back he said where centre had failed to push agriculture, Gujarat had done it successfully.  “The state, despite the deserts and scarcity of water has done tremendously well and has figured in the world agriculture map,” he said.

Delineating the challenges before the country in terms of its agricultural productivity, he said water scarcity was the biggest challenge. “In view of the scarcity of the water, I have come out with a simple formula. It’s called per drop more crops,” he said.

Citing the example of his state, he said Gujarat had tackled the water problem by bringing more land under micro-irrigation. “Earlier (prior to his reign as CM), only 12000 hectare of the land in the state was under micro irrigation. But in last ten years it has increased to 9 lakh hectare,” he said.

Laying emphasis on use of technology in for the benefit of agriculture Modi said, every farmer should be introduced to the internet on mobile. The farmers could get weather updates, information on variety of crops and other such crucial inputs.

On the difficulty of availing loans for farmers, he said less than 30 percent of the farmer can avail loans from banks, and the rest have to fall back on the moneylenders who charge astronomical interest. “Our farmers   get burdened by debts that they cannot pay and therefore take their own lives. The government knows what the problem is but has done nothing,” he said.

Pointing out country’s lack of focus on research in agriculture, he said there has been no new research on pulses in last sixty years.

Taking on the prime minister he said Manmohan Singh, while on numerous occasions appreciated what he was doing in Gujarat, had never taken on board his ideas.” Some two year back I had submitted a report to the prime minister in which I had suggested the de-merger of the powers of the food corporation of India. I had told him to separate all three of its powers—procurement, storage and distribution. If this was done, the greatest beneficiary would be the farmers of the country,” he said.

Further he said he had suggested to the prime minister to select 500 towns of the country and use their solid waste to make manure that could be given to the farmers of those surrounding towns. “This way the towns would be clean and farmers would get to use organic manure,” he said.

“While the prime minister is sitting on my ideas I am implementing them here in my state for my farmer brothers,” he said     

Concluding his speech he said such a summit will be held frequently in Gujarat for the benefit of the farmers from all over the country.

Also present on the occasion was Punjab chief minister Prakash Singh Badal. Speaking before the Gujarat chief minister, Badal said, he was inspired by what Modi was doing for farmers and would very soon hold a similar summit in his own state.