PM Oli bats for doubling agro production

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli underscored doubling agricultural production and called for adopting modern and productive agriculture rising above subsistence farming.

PM Oli, also Chancellor of the Agriculture and Forestry University (AFU), said so while addressing the 13th annual general assembly of AFU from the official residence of the Prime Minister at Baluwatar today.

Insisting that we should remove the reliance on farming for livelihood, Oli viewed that agricultural production would be boosted with thorough study on what crops could be planted where and how the market could be expanded for those products.

For that, he emphasized collaboration among government, cooperatives and the private sector. The Head of the Government requested the AFU to produce skilled agriculture scientists, engineers as well as other human resources given the increasing need and demand of human resources in the agriculture-based country like Nepal.

Around 66 percent of Nepal's population is engaged in the agriculture sector and this sector contributes one-third of the nation's GDP, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

PM Oli in his address further asserted that modern systems and mass production find a market. We will suffer a trade deficit until we increase our production. The tendency of running an economy on the basis of exports and remittance should be bucked," he stressed.

Furthermore, he shared that the government was planning fruit cultivation in vacant land in the forest. In this way we could ensure agriculture contributes to the national economy and thereby increasing self-reliance on food production."