Southern states step up efforts to bail out farmers in harvest season

Hyderabad / Bengaluru /Chennai / Kochi: The southern states are stepping up efforts to procure foodgrain and horticulture produce from the farmers’ doorstep this harvest season amid the nationwide lockdown by arranging farm labour, harvesters, gunny bags and millers, apart from setting up village-level rocurement markets.

Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala are at various stages of setting up control rooms and tollfree helplines to address the grievances of the farmers.

Some, like Telangana have ordered millers and traders to purchase foodgrain at the remunerative minimum support price, and are looking at linking the rural employment guarantee scheme to the sector. The state has also urged the Centre to allow using MNREGA to pay 50% of the farm labour with farmers paying the other half.


Tamil Nadu has announced loans to procurement agencies to buy agri-produce directly from farmers’ doorstep at fixed fair prices while Andhra Pradesh is setting up more than 700 decentralised procurement centres.

Kerala is using the market intervention fund to procure vegetables and fruits directly from the farmers at fixed prices, and Karnataka, which has already completed rabi harvest season, is stepping up efforts to help farmers with various inputs like seeds and fertilisers for the kharif season.

Some of these states are also assisting agencies like Food Corporation of India to procure foodgrain directly from farmers.

In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday, Telangana CM K Chandrasekhar Rao also urged the Centre to extend interest-free cash credit loan to the states to support the procurement operations.


The state has announced a MSP of around Rs 1,800 a quintal for paddy and maize The government has organised more than 15,000 harvesters and initiated measures to arrange around 20 crore gunny bags, said Palla Rajeshwar Reddy, chairman of Rythu Bandhu Samithi, who is heading the control room.

Alow Fertiliser imports Karnataka has sought the Centre’s help in ensuring import of fertilisers and raw material that go into making of packing material to store and transport grains.

The state has also allowed free movement of essential supplies to improve supply of fruits like mango, grapes, watermelon and jackfruit to large consumption centres like Bengaluru.

“The foodgrain production was good last year because rabi crop made up for the shortage of khariff production,” state agriculture commissioner Brijesh Kumar Dikshit said.

Loan For Vegetable Buys Tamil Nadu has announced loans of up to Rs 10 lakh each to agencies procuring fruits and vegetables directly from farmers at fixed fair prices, and will deploy around 500 mobile outlets to help farmers sell fruits and vegetables across the state.

Chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami also announced waiving the cold storage fee for fruits and vegetables till April 30 ahead of the mango harvest.

In Kerala, the government’s market intervention initiatives consisting of highest support prices for farm produce have helped farmers growing mangoes at Muthalamada in Palakkad, bananas in Thrissur and pineapple at Vazhakulam in Idukki from suffering heavy loss in the absence of sufficient market for their products.

“We are mobilising supplies from farmers at panchayat level for distribution at a fixed price,” state agriculture minister V S Sunil Kumar told ET.

Andhra Pradesh is setting up more than 700 procurement centres to procure paddy, maize, Jowar (sorghum), Bengal gram, red gram and turmeric. “The new decentralised procurement procedure not only helps the farmers sell their crop but also helps authorities implement lockdown and social distancing norms on ground as the centres are located nearer to farmlands across the state,” state agriculture commissioner Pradhyumna said.