The CSR-Agriculture forum organized by BIMTEC at MANAGE, Hyderabad, produced 5 crucial recommendations to harness CSR funds for agricultural development, aligning with India's goal of doubling farmers' income by 2022.

Rusen Kumar - Founder and Managing Editor of India CSR — Rusen Kumar – Founder and Managing Editor of India CSR

NEW DELHI: CSR-Agriculture forum organized by BIMTEC at National Institute of Agricultural Extension Management (MANAGE), Hyderabad have made 5 key recommendations in a bid to attract CSR funds that the Government of India’s mission of ‘doubling farmers income by 2022” is accomplished.

CSR and agricultural development think tank institutions and leaders came together to discuss and find new ways for betterment of agricultural development through CSR partnerships at workshop held at Hyderabad on 4-5 July 2017.

The following were major recommendations of workshop:

Formation of a National Steering Committee headed by Director General, MANAGE for advancing the agenda of leveraging CSR funds for agricultural development. The other members would be drawn from corportes, Foundations, NGOs, academic and research institutions and government departments, national and international developmental and donor agencies etc.

A strong need was felt for sensitizing corporates for making CSR investment in agriculture sector. For this, a compendium of high impact projects in agriculture sector implemented out of CSR funds should be published for wider dissemination.

Publication of quarterly e –newsletter giving information about CSR projects in agriculture sector launched by the companies and also profiles of high impact projects.

In view of overwhelming response for the workshop, one more such workshop be orgainsed by BIMTECH and MANAGE.

Feasibility of creating a corpus which can help in supporting big size high impact projects ; provide support to agriculture business incubators ; budding startups having innovative business ideas having bearing on development of agriculture sector.

While addressing the leaders, V. Usha Rani, DG, MANAGE motivated the CSR and development leaders working on agricultural and allied areas to invest their CSR fund in enough amount to empower small and marginalized farmers.