With an eye on the upcoming Assembly elections, the BJP Governments in Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka have gone the whole hog in wooing the numerically strong farming community.
The Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF) has proposed to raise the procurement price of milk by up to Rs 3/litre.
problem of plenty
This is over and above the existing Rs 2/litre subsidy that the State Government pays to farmers, which was announced by former BJP Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa.
The timing of the hike is important given that the Federation is said to have incurred a loss of Rs 59 crore last year and is currently saddled with 18,000 tonnes of skimmed milk powder and 6,000 tonnes of white butter.
The latest sweetener to farmers could make things worse considering the fact that procurement touched a record high of 52 lakh litres a day recently.
KMF has been struggling to handle the surplus volumes of milk flowing to its member unions.
“We will be raising the retail milk prices by Rs 4/litre of which three-fourth will be passed on to the farmers,” said Somashekar Reddy, Chairman, KMF.
The term of the Karnataka Assembly will end in May, while that of Madhya Pradesh in October.
Bonus time in M.P.
In Madhya Pradesh, high agriculture growth is likely to be one of the poll planks for the Shivraj Singh Chouhan led-BJP Government, which will face elections later this year.
MP, which started announcing a bonus over the Centre’s minimum support price for wheat since 2007-08, has made its intentions clear of continuing the trend in the current year.
“Within our limited resources, we have already announced our intention to offer a bonus of Rs 100 a quintal for wheat and rice over the Centre’s MSP,” said the State Agriculture Minister Ramakrishna Kusumariya.
MP’s strategy of handing out a bonus-over-MSP has helped expand the wheat acreage considerably from 37 lakh hectares (lh) in 2007-08 to 50 lh in the current rabi season.
Production has shot up from 6 million tonnes (mt) in 2007-08 to 10.5 mt in 2012-13.
soaring output
The State has emerged as a major procurer of wheat in the past five years, almost matching the traditional States of Punjab and Haryana.
Last year, MP procured 85 per cent of the wheat produced in the State against 0.8 per cent in 2006-07.
Wheat procurement stood at record high of 8.5 mt in 2011-12 against 4.90 mt in the previous year.
“We expect a minimum of 10 per cent increase in output this year,” Kusumariya said.