India: Nellore Farmers Ask Centre to Increase Area under Cultivation

Source from:  The Hindu 02/25/2016

Farmers belonging to various associations took out a rally in Kaligiri town here on Wednesday demanding that the Central government take steps for increasing the area under tobacco cultivation, keeping in view the interests of the farming community.

The farmers raised slogans saying that they were facing a lot of problems because of the reduced demand for their crop owing to heavy taxation and lesser returns on tobacco products.

R. Srikanth, farmers' leader, said there was a strong need for increasing the acreage under flue cured tobacco considering the fact that in just one year, the overall tobacco production came down from 193 million kg to 120 million kg.

He said that this drastic fall had an adverse impact on farmers.

Mr. Srikanth said that the unfavourable conditions resulted in a situation wherein the farmers were forced to commit suicides unable to bear heavy loss and debt. The banks were also unwilling to grant loans to tobacco farmers under the prevailing circumstances, he added. Enditem