In a bid to provide proper price to farmers of the State for their produce, the State Government’s Food and Civil Supply Minister, Dr Rameshwar Oraon and Agriculture Minister, Badal jointly launched paddy procurement at minimum support price (MSP) during Kharif marketing season 2021-22 on Wednesday under Namkum block of Ranchi district.
With launching at Namkum center, paddy procurement has started at 562 centers in all 24 districts of the State at the same time. A target has been set to purchase 8 lakh metric tons of paddy from farmers this year.
Before launching the programme, Oraon and Badal garlanded the statue of Bhagwan Birsa Munda and lit the lamp. On this occasion, departmental officers, Mrityunjay Varnwal, Yatindra Prasad, Prabhat Kumar, Satish Chaudhary, senior leaders of the State Congress committee, Alok Kumar Dubey, Lal Kishore Nath Shahdeo, Rajesh Gupta and representatives of local MPs and MLAs were also present. Launching the Paddy Procurement Scheme, Oraon said that with the aim of benefiting the small and marginal farmers, the State Government has started the procurement of paddy for the farmers producing 200 quintals of produce.
He said that in relation to agriculture in the Country, this saying has been prevalent for decades that agriculture in India is a gamble with the monsoon, if there is rain, there will be a crop and if there is no rain, then there will be no good crop either.
“The only way for this is to increase the irrigated agriculture area in the Country, currently only 28 per cent of the cultivable land in Jharkhand is irrigated, 72 per cent of the land lacks irrigation facilities,” he added.
The Minister said that the cooperative movement was also a failure in the Country. He said that it is also a story that farmers of the Country are born in debt, live in debt and die in debt but the Jharkhand Government will not even let the farmers get stuck in debt, far from dying in debt.
He said that under the guidance of Congress Chief, Sonia Gandhi, the then Finance Minister, P Chidambaram had started the loan waiver in the Country and the Jharkhand Government has also done the work of waiving the loan of Rs 50, 000 of farmers despite all the troubles and adverse financial condition. Most of the farmers have got the benefit of loan waiver and after the completion of the process, all other farmers will also start the work of loan waiver above Rs 50,000, he added.