Farmers protest against flower auction centre

Speaking to the media here on Wednesday, President Ramakrishna Sharma Bantadakallu said that the proposal is against the interest of the jasmine cultivators.

The venture may damage the usual process of marketing the flowers since the cultivators are used to it. The farmers engaged in the farming are reluctant towards the new idea. It may obstruct the process of transparency in the business. The initiative to set up the cold storage is sheer waste as it yields no help to the farmers, he said.

Shankarpura mallige has a life span of only 12 hrs and the flowers get dried within two hours once removed from the refrigerator. The government is taking up the initiatives that gives minimum comfort to the farmers, rather it can introduce other beneficiary programmes like compensating the victims who lost their yields owing to heavy rain. The government should support the growers financially and direct them to go for better technologies supporting high yields and improved variety of the harvest, he said.

If government fails to drop the proposal, the association along with the distributors and farmers with the support of District Farmers Association will take up rigorous protest against the offer, Bantadakallu cautioned. Andrew Lobo, Lawrence, Peter Lobo and others were present.