The National Development Council (NDC) on Tuesday refused to consider the suggestions put forward by Karnataka relating to farmers’ development even as the State welcomed the proposal for a Rs 25,000-crore plan to boost farm sector growth.
The proposals made by Karnataka included replication of the State’s decision to waive Rs 25,000 cooperative loan per farmer countrywide and expansion of this programme to commercial banks, advancing of farm loans at four per cent interest to farmers at the national level as done in the State, protecting sugar industry and sugarcane farmers and market intervention to be supported more vigorously by the Centre.
The resolution passed by the NDC at the end of the one-day meeting did not support any of the State’s proposals.
However, Home Minister M P Prakash, deputising for Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy, said later at a press briefing that Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar did mention to him that the Union Cabinet may consider the proposal to protect sugarcane farmers.
Mr Prakash, accompanied by Planning Minister Ramachandra Gowda, welcomed the Rs 25,000-crore programme as it helped the states. Karnataka may greatly benefit from this proposal, he added.
Meanwhile, the chief minister’s speech noted that the recent spate of farmers’ suicides was the result of an unfortunate mismatch between the GDP growth and wealth distribution in the country.
“Agriculture has become the weakest sector of the economy and the small and marginal farmers have been sidelined. Assured and remunerative price for farm produce is the core issue. Farmers should be assured that there would be strong government intervention to prevent distress sale”.
The chief minister’s speech, read out by Mr Prakash, said sugarcane has been cultivated in an area of 3.75 lakh hectare in the State and the total estimated production was 357 lakh tonne. Of this, 240 LT had to be crushed in sugar factories.
However, these factories are themselves facing acute financial crisis due to depressed prices and have stopped crushing operations. Since cane prices were fixed before farm prices sugar prices faced fall, the factories were bound to pay the agreed price to the farmers. This left lakhs of growers in distress. The Centre should come to the help of both factories and farmers, he demanded.
Urging the government to take up market intervention scheme, he said Karnataka has already set up a revolving fund and demanded that the Centre should provide a matching contribution to it.
The State also demanded that restrictions on export procedures for pomegranate etc to USA should be lifted as in the case of mango. It wanted the Centre to be liberal in extending the national horticulture mission to the remaining 10 districts of the State.
It sought sanction of agri-export zone for mango, pomegranate, grapes, lime, potato etc and clearance for horticulture university at Bijapur etc.