Tobacco Farmers Appeal to Board for Securing Remuneration

Source from:  The Hindu Business 11/30/2011

Tobacco farmers in East Godavari district, selling their produce at the Torredu auction floor near here, have appealed to the Tobacco Board to either secure remunerative prices on the auction floor or show them an exit route by paying them compensation so that they can go in for alternative crops. The farmers made the appeal at an interaction with the chairman of the Tobacco Board, Mr G. Kamalavardhana Rao, at the Torredu auction floor on Tuesday. They told the chairman that the Tobacco Board had earlier proposed to pay compensation of Rs 5 lakh a barn to enable the farmers switch over to alternative crops. Mr K. Satyanarayana, the president of the East Godavari District Tobacco Farmers' Association, said the cost of tobacco cultivation has gone up steeply in recent times. Traders are unwilling to pay prices the farmers are expecting, citing lack of demand for crop grown on black cotton soils of East Godavari and Krishna districts. Several farmers said they were willing to give up tobacco cultivation, provided the Tobacco Board could secure the compensation. Some others wanted the board to allow them to market the tobacco grown in the local red soils on the auction floors of West Godavari district. As there was no demand for tobacco grown in black cotton soils, they argued, they would grow the crop in local red soils and market the produce on West Godavari light soil floors. In response, Mr Kamalavardhana Rao assured them that their demands would be discussed in the board meeting and a decision would be arrived at. He told farmers that in the current crop year, the trade body, the Indian Tobacco Association, had sought only 120 million kg in Andhra Pradesh, which means a drastic cut from last year's crop size of 170 million kg. However, the board had persuaded the traders to increase the size and 163 million kg had been fixed for the State as a whole. For East Godavari, it was a little over 5 million kg. He said currently the traders are left with stocks of 30 million kg and the international market situation was not very conducive. Therefore, crop regulation was necessary. On the issue of paying Rs 5 lakh as compensation per barn, he said a proposal had been sent to the Government to implement the scheme in the State on a pilot basis, but the Union Government had not yet cleared it. Enditem