The Tamil Nadu Farmers Association affiliated to the All India Kisan Sangh has appealed to the Tamil Nadu government to direct the Vellore and Tiruvannamalai Districts’ Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union to procure the entire milk produced by the village level cooperative milk producers’ societies in the two districts and use it for producing value-added products.
The association stated that the government has to take this step in order to rescue the producers from the private dairies to whom they had to resort to distress sale of their milk owing to the refusal of the union to procure milk.
This situation has arisen on account of the excess production of milk by the members who have been benefited by the government’s scheme of free supply of milch animals. If the government did not procure the milk, the government’s intention in providing free milch animals to the farmers would be defeated, the association pointed out in a resolution passed at the Vellore district meeting of the association held at Vaniyambadi on Sunday.
M. Nandhi, district president of the association presided.
By another resolution, the association urged the government to root out the ‘karuvelam’ ( Prosopis juliflora ) trees in all the water bodies in the State in order to conserve the groundwater resources of these water bodies.
The resolution wanted the government to remove the ‘karuvelam’ trees as well as the fencing trees on the bunds of tanks and ponds in order to increase the water holding capacity of the water bodies during the forthcoming rainy season in order to save the farmers from the impact of the severe drought which they were facing.
By another resolution, the association urged the State government to follow the example of the Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah who has announced that his government would auction the accumulated sugar stocks in the private sugar mills and pay the arrears to the sugarcane growers who supplied cane to the mills.
The meeting urged the Vellore district administration to recommend to the government to declare Vellore as drought-hit, obtain drought relief funds and immediately implement drought-relief schemes in the district.
Association wants
the government
to declare Vellore
as drought-hit
