‘Raised support price to boost farmers’ income’

PATNA: Deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi said a substantial increase in the minimum support price (MSP) of Kharif crops like paddy, maize and pulses as announced by the Centre on Wednesday would help increase the income of farmers in a big way.
It would benefit over 3 lakh paddy cultivators who had registered with the Primary Agriculture Credit Societies (PACSs) during 2016-17 and several others, Modi said while putting across the party’s view in the presence of state president Nityanand Rai and senior ministers Nand Kishore Yadav, Prem Kumar and Vinod Narayan Jha.
“The state government has been procuring paddy from the farmers every year during November-March. However, this year, a beginning was also made to procure pulses like ‘chana’ and ‘masur’ from farmers, but not on a large scale. Now, a sound mechanism would be put in place to procure pulses from the farmers from the harvest season next year,” he said.
Maize has emerged as a major cash crop in north Bihar with those grown in Khagaria, Bhagalpur and Katihar among others even gaining a name in the international export market for quality. It is not procured by the state government and its domestic sale prices plummeted below the MSP this year because of low demand in the export market, sources said.
The Centre on Wednesday increased the MSP of general paddy by Rs200 per quintal to Rs1,750 per quintal and that of the Grade-A paddy from Rs1,590 to Rs1,770 per quintal.
Similarly, the MSP of maize was increased from Rs1,425 per quintal to Rs1,700 and that of ‘moong’ from Rs5,575 per quintal to Rs6,975 per quintal. Interestingly, the ‘chana’ and ‘masur’ variety of pulses cultivated in the state did not figure in the list.
Of the Kharif crops, the paddy procurement is done from November to February-March by 8,463 PACSs of the cooperative department. The farmers of the ‘tal’ area — saucer-shaped low-lying area famous for the cultivation of wheat and pulses — of Patna, Nalanda and Lakhisarai districts had staged protests demanding procurement of ‘chana’ and ‘masur’ cultivated by them.
As a result of it, the cooperative department made some start in this regard in the three districts. Now that Modi has assured that the government would put in place a mechanism for the procurement of pulses, it should cheer the farmers.