Farmers in the traditional tobacco-growing areas coming under the Southern Black Soil (SBS) and Southern Light Soil (SLS) regions have decided to go on the warpath as the market goes southward.
The farmers from the SBS and SLS auction platforms, at a meeting here on Wednesday on the eve of Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu’s visit to Prakasam district, threatened to boycott the auctions indefinitely in the next four or five days if there was no improvement in the market condition.
‘Allow FDI’
They also wanted the Centre to allow foreign direct investment (FDI) in the sector as the global players looked at India only as an “opportunity market” and not as a “definite market.”
“The demand-supply situation is in our favour with about 10 million kg less production this year. We are also denied the advantage of weakening rupee by the exporters,” they lamented.
“We want the Chief Minister to hold a meeting with the traders immediately and ensure return of market buoyancy for us to scrape through this year,” said SBS Farmers’ Association honorary president P. Bhadri Reddy after the meeting.
Referring to the Indian rupee falling to about 68 against the US dollar, its lowest against the greenback since January 2017, SBS Association secretary P. Venkateswarlu said, “It is unfortunate that the exporters are not coming forward to pass on the benefit of the weakening rupee.” There had been a fall of ₹10 to ₹15 per kg tobacco in the average price realised by the growers, as the domestic cigarette manufacturers took advantage of the exporters’ reluctance to come in a big way to make purchases on the pretext that they had not yet received confirmation of orders from overseas buyers, said Vellampalli Farmers’ Association president N. Chimpiraiah. Though the bright grade tobacco got a better price of about ₹160 per kg, the prices of medium and low grade varieties were dipping day after day, added a farmer leader from Ongole II auction platform V.V. Prasad.
This year, the production was about 10% less than the crop size fixed by the Tobacco Board. Yet, they were denied the advantage of short supply of tobacco, said P. Narasimha Rao, a farmer leader from Tangutur.
Drought
This year, they were forced to incur an additional ₹10,000 per acre to provide irrigation in view of severe drought for the fourth year in succession, explained M. Ramanaiah, a farmer leader from Kandukur.
