Farmers who switched to social forestry plantations such as eucalyptus and subabul from traditional commercial crops such as tobacco and cotton in the 1990s now rue their fate with the prices hitting a new low this month.
The latest trigger for the price fall is the GST on paper-based stationery products. While the price of subabul has come down to about ₹2,600 per tonne, eucalyptus fetched a price between ₹1,800 to 2,200 per tonne.
This was against ₹4,600 per tonne and ₹4,400 per tonne fixed by the State government at a meeting with representatives of the farmers and the paper mills in 2015, said farmer leader Ch. Ranga Rao here at a meet organised to announce protests from next week.
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Even the revised agreement brokered by the Prakasam district administration at the behest of Environment Minister Sidda Raghava Rao in September 2016 to purchase eucalyptus at ₹4,200 per tonne and subabul at ₹4,000 per tonne has been followed in breach than in observance, said YSR Congress Prakasam district president Mareddy Subba Reddy.
Adding to the farmers’ woes, the agents of the paper mills were cutting another₹200 per quintal in the wake of the Centre imposing 12% GST on paper, said All India Kisan Sabha district secretary V. Hanuma Reddy.
“We will organise a rally with participation by farmers leaders like Vadde Sobhandreswara Rao, CPI State secretary K. Ramakrishna and Congress State vice-president N. Tulasi Reddy here on July 31 to draw the attention of the State government,” said Congress Kisan cell district president V. Rajagopal Reddy.
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“We will embark on Chalo Amaravati programme next month as a last-ditch effort,” said another farmer leader M. Bangarababu.
‘Acreage may go down’
The acreage under the social forestry plantations peaked to two lakh acres in 2000 with the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development promoting them. Now the acreage had dwindled to 1.50 lakh acres as a few paper mills in the field drove down the prices in the absence of traders who were denied licences by the State government on the pretext of curbing speculative buying, explained Acharya N.G. Ranga Kisan Samastha secretary Ch. Seshaiah.
This year, the acreage under social forestry plantations might come down to one lakh acres as the farmers had started uprooting eucalyptus plantations to growing bengal gram which promised decent returns, they said. They wanted the State government to start a paper mill in the public sector to protect the farmers from exploitation by private paper mills.