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The State government has accepted the recommendation of the Karnataka State Agriculture Price Commission to set up procurement centres for red gram and paddy this year.
We expect the procurement to begin in a few days, commission chairman T.N. Prakash Kammardi has said in Belagavi.
Such market intervention will arrest the fall in prices and help farmers.
He told presspersons that last year, the State government bought 33 lakh quintal of red gram and distributed it through ration shops under the public distribution system. This year too, we have asked the government to buy green gram and Bengal gram from farmers to ensure stable prices and to distribute it through ration shops. This will not only help farmers, but also help poor families get access to protein at subsidised cost, he said. In case of maize, however, the State government is yet to take a decision on procurement. This is because the Centre is putting conditions to support procurement. The Centre is asking the State to buy maize only if it will be sold through ration shops. This is difficult in Karnataka as it is not the staple, Dr. Kammardi said.
The commission has created a scientific mechanism to fix the prices of 25 farm products, including 14 agriculture crops and 11 horticulturual crops. We have fixed the minimum prices for these produce using those systems and processes. We have also created a mechanism to forecast the probable range of prices using economic and statistical models, he said.
In order to double the income of farmers, the commission is training farmers in a select adopted villages to take up scientific agriculture. We have picked up eight villages in the first round. We will not only train farmers in remunerative farming, but also sustainable living and hygiene. A team of 25 farmers will be trained in each such village. They will be trained in krishi melas, krishi vigyan kendras, and in a centralised training programme in Bengaluru.
An impact study report of this programme will be submitted to the government to help scale up the programme, he said. We hope the training programme will be extended to the entire State in the next budget, he said. |
