'Marginal farmers committing suicides'

A two-day national seminar on 'Indian agriculture and rural indebtedness', which concluded here on Sunday, identified that most of the farmers, who committed suicide in the state, were tenants who were small and marginal farmers.

The seminar was jointly organised by the Project for Economic Education (PEE), the Virginia Tobacco Growers' Association and the Indian Liberal Group (ILG).

The participants included economists, agricultural scientists, officials, farmers, and social activists who lashed out at the rural agricultural credit system for not responding to the needs of the farmers and for remaining insensitive to their suicides.

The farmers' leader, Y Sivaji, said that though the government had announced a minimum support price (MSP) for 26 commodities, it was implemented for paddy and wheat only. He said that if the rural credit scene did not take off, instead of suicides, farmers might resort to homicides.

He said that the RBI had admitted that rural credit accounts had crashed from 211 lakh to 150 lakh in 10 years. About 3,000 rural banks in the state had reduced their exposure to farm loans from 15 per cent to 11 per cent during the same period.

Indian Agriculture Marketing Society secretary T Satyanarayana said that marketing was the weakest link in Indian agriculture. Regulated markets and rural markets in the country, numbering 7,117 and 30,000 respectively, could not solve the problem of marketing farm produce.

Tobacco Board chairman P Dayachari said agriculture production had nothing to do with the dynamics of marketing. Agriculture, which once contributed 56.4 per cent of our GDP, has now shrunk to 24 per cent while the sector still provided employment to 66.77 per cent of the population.

If the government was serious about achieving eight per cent increase in GDP, it should increase agriculture growth from 2.8 per cent to 4.5 per cent.

Institutional finance was available for tobacco farmers at 6.5-7.5 per cent interest while for farmers of other crops it was 9-12.5 interest, he pointed out.

He felt direct marketing of produce by farmers would in the long run solve marketing problem. They should be also allowed to fix prices for their produce as is done by the manufacturers. Contract farming would also mitigate farmers' woes and marketing would not be a problem then.

He mooted a price stabilisation fund for perishable crops with contributions from farmers, government and traders, and market intervention by government for hygroscopic crops. Once STC used to intervene, which is not doing the same now, he said. Information on market trends should reach farmers on hourly basis through either TV channels or internet.

District Collector K Ramakrishna Rao, submitting a survey report, said that Guntur for the last 12 years had contributed the maximum farm revenue of 10 per cent to the government.

Seventy per cent land in the district is cultivated. Farmers in the district suffered Rs 1,000 crore losses during the last two years due to scarcity of water, spurious inputs and non-remunerative prices.

He said that before the elections 45 suicide cases were reported. Twenty-one deaths were related to agriculture and other deaths due to other reasons. During the last two months, 53 farmers committed suicide and of them only 19 case were related to loss in agriculture.

Almost all of the 98 farmers were tenants. They were farmers, owning one or two acres but cultivating on average up to 18 acres on lease. These farmers belonged to dry areas of the district and they raised commercial crops like mirchi and cotton, whose prices fluctuated extremely last two years.

Mirchi acreage increased by 30 per cent, farmers brought over one crore mirchi bags to the market. Farmers borrowed heavy amounts for their children's education, family health and other social functions. Of the five lakh farmers in the district, 65,552 farmers had not so far visited any bank. Officials were doing their best to bring them also into credit net.

State cooperative registrar D Chakrapani said co-operative banks in the state had cut down farm loans from Rs 1,800 crore to Rs 1,400 crore in recent times.

During last year alone, the rural loans released came down from Rs 360 crore to Rs 127 crore. However, he observed that the Kisan Credit Cards sucked liquidity in the co-op credit system.

He said that the government would in due course revamp the whole co-operative banking sector, and felt that the co-operative banks should be allowed to function as financial institutions.

Co-op banks waste massive funds on infrastructure, staff salaries and Rs 4,618 crore has been reportedly misappropriated. Moves to cut down staff size and implement other reforms were opposed by the unions.

Former banking secretary Dinesh Chandra, in his keynote address, opposed incentives to rural credit societies. More funds should be made available to farmers. Famous agricultural scientist I V Subba Rao, was among those, who participated in the seminar.