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Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar has stressed on the need to improve crop productivity as the country requires to increase farm production to meet domestic requirement and export to global markets. He highlighted that the agriculture production has increased substantially over the years thanks to the hardwork of farmers and scientists as well as policies of the government. He said the country's population will rise by 2050, and therefore there is a need to prepare a roadmap to meet the requirement of foodgrains and other farm products.

With the growing importance of India in the world, Tomar said there is a need to plan for global requirement as well. He said the crop yields have been improving but stressed on comparing the productivity with other countries and global average. He also said ‘we have to keep on increasing the production of food grains even if the land is less'. To achieve this, he said the role of agricultural scientists and new technologies are important.

The minister said technologies like drones and micro-irrigation should be promoted in the farm sector. Stating that there are about 85 per cent small farmers in the country, he said that they should get the benefit of technology and machineries. He highlighted various steps taken by the government in the last 9 years in the agriculture sector to boost farmers income. He added that the introduction of the Rs 1 lakh crore Agricultural Infrastructure Fund is also an important step in this direction, in which projects worth Rs 14,000 crore have been approved.