Rising fuel cost adds to farmers woes

Anantapur: Cultivation for small and marginal farmers has become a difficult proposition, thanks to frequent rise in diesel prices, increase in cost of labour for sowing, removing weeds from among the crops, spraying of pesticides and renting of spraying machines, harvesting of crop, tilling and ploughing operations, collection of harvested crops, marketing of produce and a host of other cultivation related activity is costing the farmer dearly and making farming operations extremely expensive when compared to revenue earned out of their produce.

The cost of fuel for tractor, tiller and other agriculture operations had increased extensively since 2019. Diesel prices had shot up from Rs 69.20 paise a litre to Rs 100.24 from 2019 to July 1, 2021. While prices had been shooting up for farm labour and material and making farm operations extremely expensive, the returns on farm produce is however very disappointing as the average farmer is failing to get remunerative price on their produce and sometimes when a particular commodity is excessively produced is resulting in distress sales at throw away prices. During the past one year, the cost of ploughing the land has increased from Rs 900 to Rs 1,300 per acre and the cost of tilling from Rs 1,000-1,500. Similarly, cost of sowing has shot up to Rs 1,300 from Rs 900 per quintal. For, de-weeding operations, the cost has increased from Rs 1,200 per 6 hours to Rs 2,400. For spraying out pesticides, the rent of spraying machine has doubled from Rs 720 to Rs 1,440. Similarly, for crop harvesting, the cost of labour of 8 persons has increased from Rs 1,600 to Rs 3,200, cost of collection of harvested crop from Rs 900 to Rs 1,600 and the cost of loading of one bag of produce has also shot up to Rs 120 from Rs 100. In 2020, the total cost of above mentioned operations was Rs 11,320. The same increased to around Rs 20,000.

For the farmers, who at one time thought that manual operations are costlier than farm mechanisation is now re-thinking on the aspect due to abnormal shooting up of fuel prices which is now making mechanised operations a highly expensive proposition. Also, the cost of transportation of farm produce from the district to neighbouring districts and parts of Karnataka is also adding to their cost of overall farm operations and thereby landing the farmers in financial doldrums. The cost of farming operations per acre has increased by Rs 3,000 to Rs 5000. The overall financial burden on the farmers during kharif and rabi season has shot up by an estimated Rs 700 crore. During the kharif season, cultivation of multiple crops takes place in around 7 lakh hectares of land. Groundnut crop alone is raised in nearly 5 lakh hectares in the district while cotton is cultivated in 20,000 hectares and paddy in another 20,000 hectares and maize 16,000 hectares and castor oil 13,000 hectares. In a single year alone the cost of petrol had been increased by Rs 25 and diesel Rs 22. This has overburdened the farmer and made agriculture operations a challenging task. The challenges posed by Covid pandemic has further deteriorated with no guarantees of returns on atleast the money invested by them, leave alone making profits. Krishna Reddy, a farmer from Garladinne mandal, told The Hans India that out of 20 acres of land owned by him, he had raised groundnut in 12 acres and paddy in another 4 acres, compared to last year, the cost of cultivation increased from Rs 16,000 per acre to Rs 25,000 apart from an overall increase in farm operations. The abnormal increase in the cost of fuel has added fuel to the fire, he lamented. Obuleshu, another farmer from Chennekothapalli, says that unless government intervenes and bring down the cost of fuel for agriculture sector, it would be a disincentive to those who shifted from manual farming to mechanised farming. He regretted that he had to spend Rs 5,000 additionally on fuel and if the spiralling spree of diesel and petrol continued it would result in death blow to agriculture and farm mechaniszation initiatives.