Farmers from Nashik district in Maharashtra have demanded the Centre a separate budget for agriculture, similar to railways. Not only this, they have also asked of allocation for separate funds for farmers that too in sync with the ‘Price Stability Funds’.
Speaking to a national daily just ahead of Budget 2019, Kuber Jadhav said that “Separate agriculture budget would be in the interest of the farmers which would come up with a price to produce that would be one and half time more for production cost.”
Another farmer sighted problem for water for irrigation and suggested that government introduce new projects of linking of rivers across the country that would connect all the major rives such as Ganga, Godavari, Tapi, etc.
Meanwhile, a grape farmer told media persons that prices of pesticides and fungicides have increased by 50% in the last few years. In fact, the rates are still increasing as there is an increase of 5-10% every year. The separate budget for Agriculture sector would bring measures for providing pesticides and fungicides at low rates. Similarly, Budget should also eye on lowering the input cost of seeds and fertilizers, so that production can lost can be curtailed.
Farmers also complained that at present, there is no proper mechanism which could come up with authentic statistics abut the acreage of crops on day to day basis or weekly basis. The price of agriculture production often crashes if there is good or over production. At the end, it is the farmers who have to bear the loss when the supply is more than the demand. Thus, separate mechanism that would show realistic figures of sowing or plantation of agriculture produce is the need of the hour.
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