Farmers have resolved to step up stir demanding that the Centre take immediate steps to free them from indebtedness and provide them a realistic support price to ensure food security to the millions of people in the country.
Initiating a brain-storming discussion to make farming a profitable venture at a meet here on Friday to prepare ryots for a protracted struggle to press their 21-point charter of demands, All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC) State convenor and former Agriculture Minister Vadde Sobhanadreeswara Rao said unless the Centre moved a Bill to empower farmers with a right to remunerative price based on cost of production plus 50% as suggested by agriculture scientist M.S. Swaminathan, the farmers would not be in a position to continue to grow crops.
He urged the ryots to petition to President Ramnath Kovind through emails to press their demands ahead of the Bharat bandh planned on January 8. “On that day, ryots will not move farm produce from farms to the markets and hamalis will stop loading and unloading operations,” he added.
Presiding, AIKSCC Prakasam district convenor Ch. Ranga Rao said the State Government, which brokered an agreement between paper mill managements and social forestry planters, should ensure ₹4,400 per tonne of eucalyptus and causarina and ₹4,200 per tonne for subabul. It should also intervene in the market to liquidate 30 lakh quintals of Bengal gram idling in cold storages as the new crop was getting ready for harvest.
‘Loan waiver not enough’
All India Kisan Sabha national vice-president Ravula Venkaiah said farmers should be freed from indebtedness by constituting a Debt Relief Commission as in Kerala to stop unabated suicides by ryots by providing a moratorium on loans by. Waiver of bank loans would not suffice as the ryots, especially small and marginal farmers as also tenant farmers, access credit from private money-lenders for farming and other purposes, including expenses for medical and education of wards.
Kavulu Rythulu Sangham State general secretary P. Jamalaiah said though tenants accounted for a majority of farmers tilling the land, they still lacked access to institutional credit, farm input subsidy and insurance benefits as landlords refused to enter into a formal lease agreement as per the State Crop Cultivator Rights Act. The Government should on its own identify tenant farmers by holding Gram Sabhas and ensure benefits under Rythu Bharaso and other schemes meant for farmers.
