Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Wednesday raised with European Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski the concerns over the EU’s maximum residue limit (MRL) fixed for Tricyclazole, affecting Indian basmati rice exports. In the virtual meeting, both of them discussed the EU’s common agriculture policy as well as recent market reforms undertaken in India, an official statement said.
The EU has cut the MRL for Tricyclazole, a fungicide used in India to protect the paddy crop from a disease called ‘blast’. This has put basmati rice exporters in a tough position. Along with other farm-related issues, Tomar in the meeting also raised the issue of fixing the MRL of Tricyclazole used in rice crop, which has been a concern for India and is affecting India’s basmati rice exports to the EU. “All the required studies and documents have been submitted to the EU in May-2021 and MRL will be fixed by the second quarter of 2022 before next season. ….Until then, the issue may be resolved through other mitigation measures,” Tomar said.
But, the European Commissioner for Agriculture said in the meeting that such issues were not under his mandate. He, however, “assured the Indian side to raise the issues with his concerned colleagues in the European Commission,” the statement said. The two nations also discussed the EU Farm to Fork Strategy, the UN Food System Summit, bilateral cooperation, G20 Agriculture Ministers process, among others. The European Commissioner for Agriculture explained in detail the recent reforms undertaken by the EU in the common agriculture policy as well as the EU Farm to Fork Strategy to make agriculture green as well as sustainable.
He also mentioned that the EU has set a target of bringing 25 per cent of the area in the EU under organic farming by 2030. Whereas the Union Agriculture Minister explained India’s agriculture scenario and highlighted several measures taken to boost farmers’ income, including the creation of an Agri-infra fund with a corpus of Rs 1,00,000 crore and the scheme of formation of 10,000 FPOs to help small and marginal farmers in marketing of agricultural produce.
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