From Plate to Plough: In the shade of solar trees | The Indian Express

From Plate to Plough: In the shade of solar trees | The Indian Express

Written by Ashok Gulati |Published: August 5, 2019 3:54:09 am

The writer is chair professor for agriculture at ICRIER. Views are personal

From Plate to Plough: In the shade of solar trees

Helping farmers produce solar energy can help realise the government’s target of doubling farmers’ incomes.

In one acre you can have 500 solar trees in such a manner that even tractors can move through those and farmers can keep growing their normal two crops.

In July, two interesting things happened that can help Indian farmers to a large extent in augmenting their incomes. First, the Union Finance Minister (FM) in her maiden budget speech asked why the annadata (farmer) cannot become the urjadata (producer of solar power). Second, in Parliament, the agriculture minister for state, responding to a question on the prime minister’s promise of doubling farmers’ income (DFI) by 2022, admitted that the existing set of policies cannot double farmers’ real incomes by 2022.