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1 lakh baggage of paddy remained unsold with farmers as millers purchased it from different States, says activist
The predominant targets of two farm legislations, the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce Act and Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act – permitting farmers to promote their harvest exterior the notified Agricultural Market Committee (AMC) Yard and facilitation of contract farming and direct advertising – have already been put into apply in East Godavari district. The reforms have been experimented with 4 main crops – paddy, banana, coconut and sugarcane – however many farmers have complained that they’ve ruined the advertising system.
Says CPI(M) chief Moorthi Raja Sekhar: “In the case of paddy, millers were permitted to procure it from outside by 2017. Between 2017 and 2019 at least one lakh bags of paddy (each 80 kg) grown by local farmers remained unsold. The millers met their levy target by buying from Odisha, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh at lower prices than the minimum support price. The facility disrupted the entire procurement system.”
Mr. Raja Sekhar, an activist engaged on tenancy in agriculture and allied sectors, contends that the contract farming technique adopted in sugarcane farming has marred the prospects of the industrial crop in the district. “The farmers cultivating sugarcane under a contract with three factories at Tuni, Samalkota and Karapa have never received a remunerative price. The factory provides input cost on the condition that the farmer should supply the harvest to it,” he alleges.
‘A trap’
According to AP Rythu Kuli Sangham (APRS) East Godavari unit president Tirumalasetti Nageswara Rao, “The two Acts are nothing but a trap. The farmer will be lured with short-term benefits and later will be left with no option except signing the contract with corporates after the entire marketing chain is ruined.”
The Ravulapalem banana yard is flourishing with an annual turnover of ₹360 crore, the place 2,000 farmers promote their produce every single day. “If it collapses under the new system, the farmers will have nowhere to go except playing into the hands of corporates,” Mr. Nageswara Rao says.
In the case of coconut, the Farmers Producers’ Organisation (FPO) inspired in the Konaseema space didn’t succeed. The contract system may even push the way forward for tenant farmers into uncertainty, many opine.
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