The All India Kisan Coordination Committee (AIKCC), an umbrella organisation of several farmer associations, on Wednesday appealed to all State governments to formulate their own “Agriculture Policy” in the interest of farmers since the cropping pattern differs from State to State and no one policy can be helpul for all the growers. It has also suggested that both the Centre and States maintain consistency in the policies for a minimum period.
Addressing media, Gunvant Patil, General Secretary of AIKCC, questioned the Centre’s export-import policy and said it should be for five years and no tinkering should be done in between. Citing the case of ban on onion exports, he said farmers are the ultimate losers.
Patil, also a member of the committee on legal MSP, said a large portion of current agricultural data remains unreliable, often manipulated to control market prices. By embracing technology, India could leapfrog into a new era of precision farming, benefiting both farmers and consumers.
Centre-States conflict
The government recently launched the Digital Agriculture Mission that is aimed at plugging the gaps in manual crop estimation through use of technology and in next 2-3 years the accuracy of crop production estimates is expected to rise significantly.
Bhupinder Singh Mann, another farmer leader and chairman of AIKCC, said: “More than 60 per cent of our population is dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. Many a times there is a conflict between Centre and States on various issues. Most of the States do not have an agriculture policy on their own. There is dire need that state governments formulate a policy in this regard. Such a step will bring about policy consistency which is need of the hour.”
Mann said policy changes at frequent intervals harm farmers the most and hence, it is important to maintain policy consistency and this will help boost agri exports as well.
Value chain policy
AIKCC is working on this front and is meeting various farmers’ organisation and political leaders to push for this quest.
Binod Anand, vice-chairman of AIKCC, spoke about the strategic need for India to retain sovereignty over its agricultural data. He warned against outsourcing data management to foreign corporations, stressing that India must control its own agricultural future. Anand, also a member of the MSP committee, pushed for the creation of a national agriculture value chain policy that would provide a fair market environment for farmers, ensuring that they receive the rightful Minimum Support Price (MSP).
He further suggested a robust framework where 10,000 to 15,000 farmers from each region are mobilized to represent farmer interests, reducing the need for legal disputes that have long plagued India’s agricultural community.