The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare on Monday reviewed a series of major reform measures aimed at simplifying processes for farmers, traders and agri-sector stakeholders. The licensing process for the sale and storage of household pesticides has been significantly simplified. The application form for obtaining a licence has been reduced from three pages to a single page. In addition, the traditional system of providing physical leaflets with products has been discontinued and replaced with QR codes directly on product labels, eliminating additional paperwork. This reform is expected to benefit more than 40 lakh retailers and grocery shopkeepers selling products such as mosquito repellent mats, coils, liquid vaporisers and cockroach sprays.
It was also informed about steps taken to simplify the registration process for new fertilisers under the Fertilizer Control Order (FCO), 1985. Earlier, a two-tier system was in place for inclusion of new fertilisers, their specifications and methods of analysis, requiring approval from both the Technical Committee and the Central Fertilizer Committee. The dual approval mechanism has now been removed, and only the Central Fertilizer Committee has been authorised. So far, 19 applicants and manufacturers have benefited from the new system.
Digital integration has been successfully completed across all 649 customs ports in the country. End-to-end integration has been established between the Plant Quarantine Management System (PQMS) and the Indian Customs Electronic Data Interchange Gateway (ICEGATE).
Agricultural commodity importers will now need to submit only a single application through ICEGATE, following which the Import Release Order (IRO) will be issued directly to the importer’s login.
The import-export process for seeds and planting materials has been simplified. The government has completely abolished the EXIM Committee and also removed the mandatory requirement of obtaining “Prior Recommendation”, making the import-export process for seeds and planting materials faster and more convenient.
The officials also reviewed the ‘Bharat-VISTAAR – AI in Agriculture’ platform, which is aimed at making farmers’ lives easier. The platform is a new central AI-based system designed to provide important agriculture-related information on a single platform. Since the launch of its first phase on February 17, 2026, the platform has received more than 44 lakh queries.
Under another reform initiative aimed at improving ease of doing business in the agriculture sector, the government is considering streamlining the approval process for new fertilisers under the Fertilizer Control Order (FCO), 1985. Under the proposed reform, inorganic fertilisers meeting established quality and safety standards may be exempted from mandatory field trials.
Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan directed officials to further intensify the reform process to promote transparency, technological efficiency and good governance in the agriculture sector.
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