Double whammy for social forestry ryots

Prices of produce fall by over 50% and productivity also hit in Prakasam district

Farm workers segregating logs at Karumanchi , near Ongole.

Fifty-seven-year-old farmer, K.Venkat Rao, switched over from tobacco, a sunset crop, to subabul in his five-acre plot in S.N.Padu village in the year 2014.

But he rues his fate as the prices for subabul had come down by over 50% since then. Adding to his woes, productivity had also been severely hit in the wake of severe drought in the last five consecutive years.

It is not just Mr. Venkat Rao who is in an unenvious position. Planters in Addanki, Kondepi, Kandukur, S.N.Padu and Ongole Assembly constituencies in the district are in deep trouble because of moisture stress on the one hand and paper mills not honouring the agreement reached with the growers’ representatives at the behest of the State Marketing department.

“Under normal weather condition, we used to get a yield of 30 tonnes of logs. But the productivity has declined to 15 tonnes this year,” explained another farmer Ch .Srinivas, who has decided to uproot the trees and once again grow crops like cotton, chilli during this kharif season.

‘Increase customs duty’

The planters want the YSR Congress Party government in the State to impress upon the Centre to hike the customs duty on imported wood pulp by at least 30% so that the demand for their logs went up in the domestic market. They also demand that the new government to speed up the proposal mooted during the previous TDP regime by Asia Pulp and Paper for the world’s largest paper plant which had made little progress except for laying of the foundation stone on the eve of elections.

All was well as long as the Agricultural Market Committees (AMCs) regulated the sale of logs by farmers and trouble for them started only after the paper mills bypassed the AMCs and purchased the logs through its network of agents directly from farms, explained Andhra Pradesh Rythu Sangam(APRS) State General Secretary K.V.V. Prasad.

Meet tomorrow

Worried over paper mills driving down the prices for subabul and eucalyptus logs, social forestry planters from across the State will hold a conference in Ongole on Tuesday to impress upon the State government to persuade the paper mills to give the ryots ₹4,400 per tonne for eucalyptus and causarina and ₹4,200 per tonne for subabul fixed following mediation by the Marketing Department, Social Forestry Farmers Association State Secretary Vadde Hanuma Reddy said.

The government should provide compensation of ₹25,000 per acre for those farmers whose plantations had withered, to clear the dead wood, they added.

The growers who have been traditionally growing tobacco have switched over to plantations in the 1990s and the extent went up to over three lakh acres of land in Prakasam district.

But the acreage had gradually come down to 2 lakh acres due to hostile market conditions. Even now the drought-prone district accounts for 42% of the land extent under social forestry plantations and need to be nurtured to arrest deforestation and spending of precious foreign exchange to import wood pulp to meet the demand for paper.