‘Small farmers unable to adopt new techniques’

KARNAL :National Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development (NABARD) chairman Harsh Kumar Bhanwala on Saturday said that small and marginal farmers of the country were suffering due to the growing input cost and inability to take advantages of new techniques.

“About 85% of the land holdings in the country belong to small and marginal farmers. As they are in the unorganised sector, these farmers are unable to use new techniques and so their cost of cultivation shoots up but the profits are not high,” said Bhanwala.

Bhanwala said this during a programme for farmers associated with various Farmer Producers Companies (FPCS). He said producer organisations can play an important role in making the land holdings viable.

He also discussed the aggregation of produce for primary and secondary processing for value addition of the produce so that the farmers can get more profit from their produce.

Bhanwala said that in view of this, NABARD has facilitated the formation of more than 2,000 Farmers Producer Companies under the PRODUCE Fund of NABARD, in which 75 Farmers Producer Companies, including four companies in Karnal have been registered.

Bhanwala also took feedback from the farmers about the cost of cultivation, income from the farming activities and problems faced by them. After the programme, Bhanvala visited the input shop run by Progrower FPC at Taraori and a custom hiring centre and farmer Sultan’s fish seed farm.