Rasulpur: Over 10,000 farmers under this block in Jajpur district have been allegedly deprived of getting groundnut seeds from the state government, a report said.
Rasulpur is a leading block in Jajpur district where agriculture is the mainstay for majority of the residents. The farmers here cultivate a range of crops right from paddy to cash crops like groundnuts and vegetable crops.
The Agriculture department has taken a decision to cultivate groundnuts on large patches of land instead of in individual farmlands of farmers. This has become a practice and groundnut cultivation has been carried out in a similar manner for the last few years.
However, the new practice has hit the farmers as the Agriculture department has stopped giving subsidies and incentives to all the farmers. The new practice has benefited only a handful of farmers while depriving the rest of the lot. Observers claimed that the government policy will deal a heavy blow to cultivation of agriculture and other crops and demanded a review of the policy.
This has sparked resentment among the farmers as they demanded equal treatment to all the farmers and not to differentiate among them. Observers have demanded to deposit the money towards the subsidies for the Rabi and Kharif crop season in their bank accounts which they will spend on buying seeds, pesticides and other materials from the market.
Reports from the block agriculture office said the groundnut cultivation this year is done on less amount of land in comparison to previous years. In previous years, groundnut cultivation was carried out on an average of 6,000 hectares of land out of 10,000 hectares of farmlands in the block.
This year the department has planned for groundnut cultivation on 3,750 hectares of land due to decline in production, drastic fall in groundnut price during harvest and reduced government incentives to the farmers. The block has over 30,000 farmers out of which 40 per cent of them are into groundnut cultivation.
However, only 250 farmers among them will be able to get government benefits, an official of the agriculture department said. The department has also planned to provide financial assistance to only 15 per cent of the farmland carrying out groundnut cultivation.
The financial assistance will not come for free to the farmers as the former will have to invest 40 per cent of the expenses needed for cultivation. As per plan, groundnut cultivation will be carried out on 250 hectare of farmlands under the block.
The cultivation requires 225 kg of groundnut seeds per hectare of farmland. The Agriculture department will provide 150 kg of seeds while the rest of 75 kg of seeds will have to be borne by the farmers.
Accordingly, the block has received 2,250 quintals of seeds for the cultivation which is being distributed by the village agriculture officials. The farmers will get the pesticides when the cultivation will reach the halfway mark. What is surprising is that the farmers will not receive any compensation from the government if they face crop loss due to natural calamities.
When contacted, Bhagyadhar Sahu, assistant agriculture officer, said, “There will be good harvest if the climate favours the farmers.”
PNN