It is not going to be a rich harvest for the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana in Prakasam district as a majority of farmers are either disinterested in buying insurance or not in a position to access it as they are out of the ambit of the institutional credit.
The coverage may not cross the 10 per cent mark during kharif season this year in this drought-prone district, where the ryots need the insurance coverage the most as farming is a gamble with the monsoon.
With only 50,000 of the about six lakh farmers covered by the improvised crop insurance scheme, the deadline for selling insurance has been extended to August 10 from July 31, for all crops. The exception is for paddy, with deadline of August 20, says Agriculture Joint Director J. Muralikrishna while explaining the salient features of highly subsidised insurance scheme with uniform rate of 2 per cent for kharif crops covering risk from pre-sowing to post-harvest stage.
As many as 46,000 loanee farmers had so far subscribed to the insurance scheme. The number of non-loanee farmers who bought insurance was about 4,000 in the district, says Lead Bank District Manager M. Narasimha Rao. While farmers under the Krishna Western Delta (KWD) and Nagarjunasagar Project (NSP) command areas are yet to make up their mind on paddy cultivation since the Srisailam reservoir has witnessed good inflows, those who went for dry crops like green gram, red gram etc., are not keen to buy insurance in view of less capital investment, says State Kavulu Rythu Sangam secretary N. Ranga Rao.
Most of the two lakh tenant farmers in the district still do not have access to institutional credit, he said, adding a recent government circular, which made lease agreement mandatory for getting crop loan, put paid to the hopes of these sections of farmers to get the Loan Eligibility Cards (LECs). ‘Cultivation certificate’ to enable tenant farmers to access bank credit has so far been provided only to 700 of them. Pointing out that kharif and rabi seasons overlapped in the district,
Sangam district secretary P. Hanumantha Rao said the last date for buying insurance should be extended till release of the Krishna water to the district.
Ryots grow paddy in one lakh hectares and ID crops in another one lakh hectares in KWD and NSP command areas.
Coverage may not cross 10 per cent mark during kharif this year in the drought-prone district
