Farmers facing hardships in absence of MSP policy
Source: Chronicle News Service

Imphal, June 19 2021: Several farmers, who depend on income from agricultural and allied activities, are now facing unprecedented financial hardships due to lack of market for selling agricultural products and absence of policy for fixing Minimum Support Price (MSP) for farmers.

There are several farmers, who sell their agricultural products to meet the family expenses and maintenance.

However, they are now facing problem of absence to market their products amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the absence of a fixed MSP for agricultural products and mechanism to buy them, farmers are seeing no hope of any help from the government in this critical situation.

Speaking to The People's Chronicle, a farmer from Bishnupur district informed that they are suffering loss or either getting no profit from their farm products during the pandemic.

In the absence of proper market, they are forced to sell their products at whatever price they get before their products perish or become stale.

Now, the monsoon rain is approaching and it is time for starting paddy cultivation.

However, many of them are left with no cash to start the time bound activities since they could not sell their farm products at profitable rate and they could not sell previous year's excess stock of paddy due to the pandemic.

Generally, the farmer said, he sells excess paddy stocks from his granary to meet the expenses of agricultural activities during the monsoon season.

This year, he is finding it difficult to find buyers.

The main reason for lack of buyers might be depleting income source due to pandemic and rice distributed under PMG-KAY and NFSA, he opined.

There are several farmers, who are facing similar situations like him.

It would be better if there is a policy of the government to buy agricultural products from the farmers, he suggested.

Leader of a farmers' organisation also aired the same concerns and said that absence of government policy to buy agricultural products from the farmers is a main drawback in the agriculture sector of the state.

Besides, there is no policy to fix MSP for agricultural products.

As a result, farmers are always on the losing side, he said while stressing the need for taking up such measures.

An agricultural expert told TPC that the government first need to collect data on the types of agricultural products produced in the state and their production capacity along with annual requirement for public consumption in order to fix MSP and buy agricultural products from the farmers.

Agricultural sector is an unorganised sector and lacks systematic approach to address the issues concerning this sector.

The government needs to reorganise the sector and get subsidy from the central government for procuring agricultural products from the farmers based on the annual requirement for public consumption.

It needs proper planning, political will and coordination among line departments, the expert said.

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