The Centre needs to expand irrigation coverage, give a big push to crop insurance and make agriculture remunerative, rating agency CRISIL has said. Ahead of the Union Budget proposals, it has also recommended extending the Direct Benefits Transfer scheme to food and fertiliser subsidies, and generating non-farm employment. Read our full coverage on Union Budget 2016 It says some broad areas require innovative policy solutions to restore the rural economy. Irrigation, it says, covers only 47 per cent of the country's cropped area, exposing the rest to monsoon shocks. Around 84 per cent of pulses, 80 per cent of horticulture, 72 per cent of oilseeds, 64 per cent of cotton and 42 per cent of cereals are cultivated without assured irrigation. The combined spending of Centre and states on irrigation has been two per cent annually of their total spending in the past five years - also less than the three per cent annually spent on this in the five preceding years. In the 2015-16 Budget, the government had allocated Rs 5,000 crore for micro-irrigation, watershed development and the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana. "Such spending needs to be encouraged and linked to employment generation. Focus on irrigation will require the government to deploy sustainable micro-irrigation schemes and creation of assets for rainwater harvesting and storage," CRISIL said. As for crop insurance, which got Rs 2,600 crore in 2015-16, it wants this raised. An Assocham-Skymet survey (April 2015) found only 19 per cent of respondents had their crops insured. The government recently launched the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, a crop insurance scheme, operational after April 1. Effective implementation will be key to meeting the target of 50 per cent coverage in the first two years. CRISIL says adequacy of coverage per farmer per crop will be critical to ensure its usefulness. Other challenges include ensuring the transparent assessment of crop damage within a specified time following weather shocks, and the ability to adequately compensate for the losses within the shortest possible time. The report also said the Centre should make agriculture profitable through easy availability of high-variety seeds at reasonable costs, reducing the cost of transportation, effective market pricing of produce, drought-proofing the sector by expanding irrigation cover and introducing the latest technologies. CRISIL said in many pulses crops, the difference between cost of cultivation and output price had widened. In urad (gram), for instance, while output prices in the past decade have risen by 12 per cent, cost of cultivation in major producer states are up by 12-26 per cent. Source - business-standard.com