A social media group of agriculturists and farming enthusiasts has put forth to political parties their expectations from the next State government.
In the list of 16 demands are incentives for educated youth willing to take up farming, warehouses in each taluk to store farm commodities, and pension for farm labourers.
The Facebook group, ‘Agriculturist’, created in 2011 has 2.78 lakh members with 2.03 lakh of them active across the world, Mahesh Puchhappady, one of the administrators, told The Hindu. Ramesh Delampady is the other administrator.
The list of expectations has been sent, both online and offline, to the Congress, BJP, JD(S), CPI(M) and the Aam Aadmi Party.
The demands were finalised after inviting suggestions from group members, he said. According to him, a journalist-cum-agriculturist, about 500 members have ‘reverse migrated’, meaning, they have quit their jobs in cities and towns and returned to agriculture.
The comments and posts on the group indicated that many such youths are willing to return. Such youth needed technical guidance, incentives and encouragement to take up farming afresh, he said.
Among the other expectations included round-the-clock power supply for irrigation pump sets, not free of cost but at a nominal rate, fixing rates for all farm commodities in advance during sowing season itself, and the government taking the responsibility of purchasing farm commodities by estimating the demand well in advance.
According to the list, the government should encourage value addition to farm commodities in the village level itself by helping in marketing them and bringing all farm-related documents under one platform as a single document.
It said science graduates should be appointed as a resource person in each village to guide farmers; and water harvesting should be made compulsory.
