Total agricultural land goes down by 14 per cent

New Delhi, Dec 8: The total agricultural land in the country has gone down by 14 per cent, a downward trend started 50 years ago, Congress member Santosh Bagrodia said today.

Taking up the Agricultural Produce (Remunerative Prices) Bill, 2006, Mr Bagrodia said at the same time the size of the land holdings have gone down due to increased fragmentation.

He said state government have to undertake reforms in agricultural cooperatives and remove bottlenecks during selling of the agriculture produce by the farmers.

The Public Distribution System (PDS) must be renewed which would help the poorest of the poor. But anomalies like loss of foodgrain during transaction and short-selling by the ration shop owners have to be checked.

The Bill moved by V Naranaswamy of the Congress on November 24, 2006 seeks to provide for ensuring remunerative prices for the agricultural produce of the farmers by fixing the minimum support price, compulsory purchase of the produce through governmental agencies and compulsory market intervention by such agencies in case of bumper crops.

Earlier the House moved a set of Bills which included the Children School Bags (limitation on Weight) Bill, that seeks to limit the weight of school bags and fix responsibilities of the schools to ensure compliance of the limitations.

The Bill was moved by Vijay Darda, Congress. He also introduced the Mobile Camera Phone users (Code of conduct) Bill that seeks to provide a code of conduct for users of mobile camera phones at certain places and regulate their use by children.

Sushma Swaraj of BJP introduced a Bill to provide for prevention of sexual harassment or exploitation of working women at their workplaces by their employers.

Mr Arjun Kumar Sengupta (Independent) appreciated the suggestion for setting up a Commodity Board for monitoring purposes in the marketplace to help the farmers in all respects from cultivation level to marketing the produce. He said that instead of public-private partnership, there should be public civil society partnership to monitor the policies related to the farming community.

On the minimum support price (MSP), he said there should be some mechanism which would reflect the opinion of the people who are affected. Government intervention should be there at the time when there is a bumper crop and the MSP should be fixed in a way that Food Corporation of India (FCI) buy the produce.

Whenever there is bumper crop and farmers' fear for better price of their produce, there should be buffer stock system by the Government to intervene in the marketing of produce. And, in that, Commodity Board will play an important role.

He further said that PDS was for the poor people and the introduction of BPL and APL cards was a major source of corruption.

Supporting the Bill, Mr Sengupta said that different Commodity Boards should be set up for different items produced by the farmers.

Mr Suresh Bharadwaj of BJP said that more than 73 per cent people are engaged in agriculture activity. Even after 60 years of independence, farmers had to rely on outside forces for raising loans and indulging in idebtedness with moneylenders.

In the name of globalisation and liberalisation, farmers were getting more and more into problems. He still has to depend on rain in the absence of proper irrigation facilities. Agricultural land was shrinking day by day and farmers' children were rushing to urban areas for their livelihood.

He urged for easy credit for the farmers from nationalised banks and financial institutions to protect them from the clutches of moneylenders.

Mr Bharadwaj also suggested the setting up of an independent Commodity Board.

Mr Matilal Sarkar of CPI(M) blamed the faulty agricultural policy which was not yielding good results. Policies should be viable so that farmers should have sufficient land and substantial income to return the loans in time.

He said about 66 per cent of the farmers had less than 2 acres of land. There should be an irrigation policy as till today, only 40 per cent of the land has irrigational facilities and the rest has to depend on natural sources. Farmers should be provided with quality seeds, pesticides and fertilizers at affordable prices.

Financial assistance should be arranged from easy credit sources so that the farmers do not go to moneylenders to get indebted which ultimately pushes them to suicide. He should have access to nearby markets to sell his crop.

Population was growing at the rate of 1.8 or 2 per cent per annum whereas agri-produce growth was only 1.3 per cent per annum. For lack of public investment in agriculture, the sector was on the decline.

To help farmers, all of them should be brought under the crop insurance scheme. Irrigation facilities were far less than the requirement. Agri-production was unstable and had been going down in the last 4-5 years.

Mr Sarkar also suggested that while fixing the MSP, the Government should take into consideration the cost of production of a crop and then fix the MSP. Cost of production should also include the agricultural labour charges which was around Rs 125-150 per day.

In the absence of proper MSP, sometimes farmers went for distress sale of their produce. This sector is the largest employment provider and the facilities provided by the government were far less.

Mr Mangani Lal Mandal of the RJD said agriculture provided employment to 66 per cent of people in the country. Still, 25,000 farmers committed suicides in the past 10 years. Land reforms were essential to stop this, he said. Also, interlinking of rivers should be taken up -- within the country and within the states as well.

Mr C. Ramachandraiah of the TDP said over 8,900 farmers had killed themselves during 2001-06. At the same time, the annual growth rate in agriculture sector had not exceeded 1.2 per cent compared to four per cent expected in the 10th five-year plan.

The productivity in agriculture was less than half of what was there in Japan and the United States, he said.

Mr E.M.S. Natchiappan of the Congress said many agriculturists still depended on vagaries of climate. As a result, the planning was faulty.

The discussion will continue next week.

UNI