Government to handhold farmers from seeds to markets: Modi

New Delhi, Aug 15 (IANS) Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said the government would handhold farmers right from procurement of seeds to access to the markets in order to improve their lives.

"Unless we give them facilities from seed to the market, we cannot change their fate," Modi said in his speech here on the occasion of Independence Day.

Modi said the government had completed 21 irrigation schemes in the last three years and 50 more would be completed soon.

"I have taken a resolve for 99 such big schemes to ensure that water reaches the fields of the farmers and they will all be completed before 2019," he said.

Modi said there would be an India by 2022 where farmers would be able to sleep without any worry and earn double than what they earn now.

Modi added that lakhs of crores worth of vegetables, fruits and crops rot due to lack of storage facilities and to change that, the government is encouraging Foreign Direct Investment in food processing and infrastructure creation.

The Prime Minister added that the government in India never had a culture of buying pulses from the farmers.

"If at all, the government may have bought some thousands of tonnes of pulses in specific cases. But this time, when farmers produced record quantity if pulses, 16 lakh tonnes of it was bought by the government to encourage farmers to produce more," he said.

Modi added that number of farmers covered under crop insurance schemes had increased significantly in the last three years from 3.25 crore and would soon touch 5.75 crore figure.

The government will create facilities and infrastructure which will handhold farmers right from the seed to the market in order to bring change in their lives, he added.