Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao said that the State-level farmers coordination committee will be mandated to purchase agricultural produce from farmers if they are not guaranteed minimum support price by traders at market yards.
The State government will give a bank guarantee of ₹ 6,000 crore to ₹ 7,000 crore for the corpus for the State level panel to let it purchase the produce and, also permit it to sell the stocks anywhere in the country, Mr. Rao told a regional conference here on Sunday of the recently constituted farmers coordination committees from villages to State level. He officially announced Nalgonda MP Gutha Sukhender Reddy who was also present on the dais as the chairman of the State committee.
Expressing dismay at the collusion of commission agents and traders at market yards, Mr. Rao asked the committees to gear up farmers to sell their produce at MSP ‘on demand’. The panels should ensure that farmers in clusters of only three villages shifted the stocks to market yards to avoid heavy arrivals. Seamless transactions and better price to farmers can be ensured if the arrivals were regulated by the committees by allotting dates village-wise.
The committees should be fully equipped with information about crop details acre wise. They will shortly get computers and accommodation at market yards for effective functioning.
Later on, he said the government will sanction ₹ 12 lakh each for construction of permanent ‘Rytu Vedikas’ over an acre of land in each village. The committees will be responsible for all agricultural activities from cropping to marketing for every 5,000 acres.
Mr. Rao announced an incentive for committee members if they did well like the revenue staff who got one month basic salary for successful updation of land records. They will also be given priority in the tour of Israel planned by government for agricultural officers to study farm extension activity.
The immediate task for them was to distribute demand drafts of ₹ 4,000 per acre per farmer as investment support of government in kharif. In the second instalment of another ₹ 4,000 payable in November, Mr. Rao said the government will distribute pre-paid bank cards to farmers. He asked the committee members, in all 1.61 lakh, to work as watchdogs to prevent distribution of spurious seed and promote crop colonies.
