New Delhi, Dec 24 (TIWN) The Consortium of Indian Farmers Associations (CIFA), India's apex professional farmers' organisation engaged in effective policy level interventions on behalf of farmers from all over India, has met with Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to participate in pre-Budget discussions where it put forth the key concerns and demands for the betterment of Indian farmers.

The essential driver for seriously considering farmer improvement measures both at the operational and the policy levels stems from the need to achieve the government''s twin goals of doubling farmer incomes by 2022 and of making India a USD 5 trillion economy by 2025. In order to achieve these targets, it is imperative that the present government frames and implements a stable long term agricultural and rural policy to ensure that the populace in the rural parts of the country has a level playing field vis-à-vis people of urban India.

Today, agriculture is the only sector which has a net negative ROI as the priority is to keep the inflation low resulting in farmers getting lower price for their produce. This prevents agricultural wealth creation and limits farmers'' ability to invest, expand, and improve farm practices.

A precise illustration of this challenging situation is the tobacco farmers who have been severely economically hit by the discriminatory nature of taxation applied on cigarettes in the country. Additionally, on the issue of the most critical input factor - water for the farmer, it is the responsibility of policy makers to improve the water use efficiency, incentivise low water intensity crop production in areas under canal irrigation to reduce water intensity crops cultivation, and provide live irrigation to rain-fed areas to improve output efficiencies to meet domestic demand and consequently sustain the agriculture sector.