Kerala - Kozhikode   

Infam moots action plan for farm revival

KOZHIKODE: The Indian Farmers Movement (Infam) has released a 20-point demand and action plan for protection of the agricultural sector for consideration of political parties and declared farmers would vote only for those candidates who promise to implement it.

“Election time is the most appropriate time for bringing farmers’ problems before political parties,” Joseph Ottaplackal, Infam’s national chairman; P.C. Cyriac, national president, and Antony Kozhuvanal, Infam’s national general secretary, said while releasing the action plan at a press conference.

They called for “action on a war footing since productivity, production and area under cultivation had diminished significantly in the State and the State government’s debt relief and other welfare measures for farmers were not yielding the desired results.”

The national growth rate for agriculture had increased but in the State, production, productivity and area under cultivation had declined, they said quoting from the State Planning Board’s economic review. “Unless drastic measures are taken to revive the agriculture sector, before long Kerala would be a zero-agriculture region," they said, adding that the State should learn from the progress achieved by Tamil Nadu and Karnataka in the agriculture sector.

For revival of the farm sector, Infam demanded role for farmers and farmers’ organisations in planning and implementation of agriculture development programmes; free supply of electricity for farming operations; steps to promote organic farming; insurance cover against crop loss due to pest attacks and natural calamities; revamping of the Agriculture Department to introduce a single-window system of delivery of information and benefits so that benefits of research in the fields of coconut, paddy, tapioca, pepper and fruits would reach farmers directly as was happening in the case of rubber; and steps to make corrections in the debt relief scheme since many small farmers in Kerala had not got its benefits.

The Infam leaders also demanded the right for farmers to use the labourers of their choice for farming operations and a system in which farmers and milk producers would directly get the subsidy available for fertilizers and cattle feed.

Others suggestions made for boosting the farm sector included right to farmers to produce ‘neera’ (sweet drink from coconut palm); protection to crops from wild animals, stabilisation of price for farm produces so as to offset losses suffered ; raising floor price to meet rising cost of living; reduction in stamp duty for partitioning farm land when its beneficiaries are farmers’ children; an end to compulsory collection of money to pay pension to farmers, and steps to increase water resources.

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