CM defends Farm Bills, says they will boost income, create rural jobs
MADURAI: The Farm Bill 2020 introduced by the Centre would benefit farmers and protect their livelihood. The new Bill while offering farmers assured price for their produce would also boost food processing industries and create job opportunities to enhance rural economy, Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswamy told reporters at Madurai airport on Tuesday evening.
Listing advantages of the new Bill, he said farmers could make agreements with any trader on their own to market their produce. The Centre has also fixed slabs and if the produce fetched high price, provision has also been made for profit sharing for farmers.
The Farm Bill 2020 is a bonanza for the farming community, but the opposition parties were carrying out a false propaganda terming it as ‘anti-farmers’. Their claims were absolutely wrong.
Currently, the policy of selling farm produce to anybody and anywhere exists in Tamil Nadu and the Centre has expanded the same system to the whole country through this new Bill. More importantly, middlemen would be eliminated as farmers would get direct link to traders. There’s no market trade fee and tax and farmers of Tamil Nadu could gain access to ‘Uzhavan app’ to market their produce.
But in other states, including Punjab, which is opposed to the Bill, traders have to pay three percent rural development cess towards market fee for paddy and wheat and 2.5 per cent to middlemen for the produce they buy from farmers. On the whole, traders had to bear the brunt of eight per cent cess and ultimately farmers would be burdened as they could not market their produce profitably. There were also rumors that paddy and wheat procured in large quantities by the government at minimum support price in Punjab would be stopped after the implementation of the Bill. However, PM Modi made it clear that such practice would not be stopped. In Tamil Nadu, 282 regulated markets were functioning and such facilities would be improved further for the benefits of farmers.