Punjab Government on Wednesday set up a high-level panel to suggest measures for improving economic conditions of the farmers.
The announcement to form the panel was made by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal while addressing the Agriculture Summit. The panel, headed by Punjab State Farmers' Commission chairman Dr GS Kalkat and comprising agriculture scientists, experts, economists and progressive farmers, would finalise a time-bound action plan to bail out “beleaguered” peasantry from the present crisis.
“Due to the shrinking of current land holdings, rising cost of the agriculture inputs coupled with the non-remunerative MSP(Minimum Support Price) and the apathetic attitude of the centre, agriculture was no longer a profitable venture and was passing through a severe crisis,” said Badal. Asking farmers to minimise their expenditure, Badal said that unproductive expenditure by owning tractors and expensive farm equipments just for the sake of false prestige must be curtailed.
He vehemently pleaded that the Centre should exempt excise duty on import of farm machinery, equipment and high-tech implements forthwith to boost farm mechanisation in the country to help farmers enhancing their productivity on one hand and propel the crop diversification program on the other. In order to boost research in agriculture, Chief Minister also demanded that the Union Government must earmark at least two per cent of the total agriculture GDP on Research and Development (R&D).
Badal also announced that PEPSU Tenancy Act would be suitably amended to ensure that landlords were paid lease rent on the basis of prevailing market rates and not as one third of the crop value as now provided in this archaic law. “It would enable farmers to get more and remunerative MSP as the lease rent paid by them was considered as one of the factors to determine the MSP by the CACP,” he added.