"Farmers have suffered a lot under the 12-year rule of Naveen Patnaik. There was no green revolution and the cooperative movement remained weak," OPCC president Niranjan Patnaik said in a statement after returning from a six-day padyatra in the western part of the state.
Quoting from the Odisha government Economic Survey of 2011-12, he said in 2000-2001 the total cultivable land was 58.29 lakh hectares which has been reduced by seven per cent to 54.07 lakh in 2011-12 in the state.
The yield in Punjab is 41.48 quintal per hectare, but in Odisha it is only 13.93 quintal, he said.
Referring to his padyatra, Niranjan claimed that farmers in the western part of the state were not getting remunerative prices for their produce because of poor marketing linkage and procurement infrastructure even as the state government continued to deny distress sale.
