Crop investment support should have been priority of Telangana Govt, opine farmers

Mobilizing agriculture investment support from private sources is an uphill task. Loan waiver should have been scheduled after Rythu Bharosa.

Hyderabad: In the given situation, the crop investment assistance is more important for every farmer at this particular juncture. Given a chance to choose between the loan waiver and the assistance promised under Rythu Bharosa, “I will prefer the latter”, said Peddinti Satyanarayana, a farmer from Aswaraopet.

He said the government is not aware of the hardships the small and marginal farmers were facing in borrowing money required to support the initial activity for the ‘Vanakalam‘ crop season. Even farmers with land holdings ranging up to five acres need to have at least Rs 50,000 in cash on hand to ensure that the farm activity takes off without any delay.

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The banks were not venturing to meet the credit needs of such farmers as their crop loans were long overdue. Stretching hands before the private money lenders to meet the crop investment was indeed prohibitive but inevitable. The interest they charge was exorbitant as the interest rate varies from three per cent per month and in case of emergencies it goes up to four to five per cent in the villages, he added.

This being the condition of the farmers, they were ready to receive the crop investment support even at the previous rate of Rs 5000 per acre as it would save them from being left at the mercy of the money lender. The loan waiver was equally welcome, but it should have been advanced by at least a month. The banks would have come forward to extend fresh loans to the farmers once the existing loans were waived. The waiver is not properly timed by the government, he felt.

Another farmer Madikanti Narsaiah, from Mannegudem in Mahabubabad district said the farmers despite all the help extended by the previous government were yet to be out of the debt trap. Both crop investment support and loan waiver are equally important to extend a helping hand to the farmers. Many of the tribal farmers in the village are making a beeline before the seed distributors and fertiliser retailers.

The seeds and fertilisers are available on credit and repayment would be scheduled at the harvest time. Government support for crop investment support by the end of July would be more productive for them besides saving the farmers from the lenders.

A farmer from Nizamabad, Mara Ganga Reddy expressed the hope that the state government would give more priority to the agriculture investment support over all other initiatives intended to reach out to the farmers. In anticipation of the loan waiver, the farmers did not repay the existing loans and the banks did not come forward to extend fresh loans to the farmers so far in this season. It is a peculiar situation in the state.

Since the systems were being streamlined by the government for extending the loans waiver and the crop investment assistance, it is worth waiting, he said. At least from the next season onwards the farmers would get timely support from the government, he hoped.