Ryots protest before Tobacco Board

Farmers' association blames cigarette giant ITC for crisis in auction

Hundreds of farmers staged a dharna before the Tobacco Board here on Wednesday and forced its officials and members to defer decisions on fixing the crop size for 2004-05 as well as regularisation of 32,191 illegal barns in Karnataka. The farmers alleged that traders were deliberately bringing down purchase prices at the auction platforms.

The farmers were also bitterly opposed to regularisation of illegal barns in Karnataka. They alleged that the board was showing leniency towards Karnataka farmers at the cost of Andhra farmers. For getting an illegal barn regularised, an Andhra farmer has to pay a fee of Rs 4,000 to the board.

K V V Prasad and P Venkat Rao, the leaders of Andhra Pradesh Farmers' Association, blamed cigarette giant ITC for the crisis on the auction floors. They alleged that the cigarette giant was influencing the floor prices.

The southern black soil (SBS) tobacco which attracted a price of Rs 48 per kg a fortnight ago had now crashed to Rs 34. The farmers would lose Rs 1,200 per quintal as a result, they said.

They said auctions began in the last week of January. Only one-fourth (427,34,743 kg) of the estimated 141.34 million kg tobacco had been purchased so far.

India's rivals in the international market, Zimbabwe, China and the US recorded poor tobacco harvest this season. Even then, the traders were not actively taking part in the auctions on the pretext of lack of export orders, they explained.

Tobacco Board executive director K J B V Subrahmanyam told Business Standard that a meeting of the production committee would be convened shortly to decide the crop size for AP and Karnataka this year.

He said there were a few exporters and only two manufacturers who were participating in the auctions. The exporters were choosy and were seeking specific and quality tobacco varieties among the 74 tobacco grades.

As against the minimum support price of Rs 29-31, the prices offered by the traders on Wednesday varied from Rs 4 to Rs 51per kg depending on the quality and requirement.

The state government announced 20 days before the notification of election schedule that it had sanctioned Rs 5 crore to the Federation of Tobacco Growers' Cooperative Societies.

However, the amount had not yet reached the federation, they said. They appealed to the Tobacco Board to intervene in auctions by purchasing tobacco directly from farmers by utilising the cess worth Rs 60 crore collected from them.

They reminded that the Board had already passed resolutions three times earlier, seeking the Centre's permission for utilising the cess to make purchases.

S Gurava Reddy, another farmers' leader, said the rates offered for quality tobacco at the Ongole-1 auction floor had come down to Rs 41 from Rs 48 recently.