A failed experiment in East Godavari

1 lakh bags of paddy remained unsold with farmers as millers bought it from other States, says activist

The main objectives of two farm legislations, the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce Act and Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act – allowing farmers to sell their harvest outside the notified Agricultural Market Committee (AMC) Yard and facilitation of contract farming and direct marketing – have already been put into practice in East Godavari district. The reforms have been experimented with four major crops – paddy, banana, coconut and sugarcane – but many farmers have complained that they have ruined the marketing system.

Says CPI(M) leader Moorthi Raja Sekhar: "In the case of paddy, millers were permitted to procure it from outside by 2017. Between 2017 and 2019 at least one lakh bags of paddy (each 80 kg) grown by local farmers remained unsold. The millers met their levy target by buying from Odisha, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh at lower prices than the minimum support price. The facility disrupted the entire procurement system."

Mr. Raja Sekhar, an activist working on tenancy in agriculture and allied sectors, contends that the contract farming method adopted in sugarcane farming has marred the prospects of the commercial crop in the district. "The farmers cultivating sugarcane under a contract with three factories at Tuni, Samalkota and Karapa have never received a remunerative price. The factory provides input cost on the condition that the farmer should supply the harvest to it," he alleges.

‘A trap’

According to AP Rythu Kuli Sangham (APRS) East Godavari unit president Tirumalasetti Nageswara Rao, "The two Acts are nothing but a trap. The farmer will be lured with short-term benefits and later will be left with no option except signing the contract with corporates after the entire marketing chain is ruined."

The Ravulapalem banana yard is flourishing with an annual turnover of ₹360 crore, where 2,000 farmers sell their produce every day. "If it collapses under the new system, the farmers will have nowhere to go except playing into the hands of corporates," Mr. Nageswara Rao says.

In the case of coconut, the Farmers Producers’ Organisation (FPO) encouraged in the Konaseema area did not succeed. The contract system will also push the future of tenant farmers into uncertainty, many opine.