Anantapur: Farmers plead for groundnut processing centres in Anantapur

Anantapur-Puttaparthi : With monsoon playing truant with farmers, world’s largest acreage of groundnut crop is in peril. For years, farmers are facing the same problem of a failed monsoon followed by a damaged crop. Knowing fully the climatic volatility, farmers never venture to ‘call it quits’ to their traditional groundnut crop despite advises from scientists and government agriculture functionaries.

Every year, agriculture scientists advise the farmers to diversify into alternative crops which are commercial in nature including pulses, millets and other short-term crops. These commercial crops can be harvested thrice a year and all commercial crops are profit-making.

The farmers highly sentimental of their traditional crop are reaping only losses and misery. Farmers unable to adapt to changing conditions are landing in indebtedness and becoming highly dependent on government subsidies on seed, fertilizers and crop compensation.

Farmers are preferring to lean on government provided crutches and at the end of the day are ending up in failure. The very purpose of government subsidies to make farming a profitable proposition is being defeated.

Farmers have become so much addicted to freebies and subsidies that political parties in competition are promising heaven, politicising farming and farmers. Ultimately farmers instead of operating on commercial lines have become the blue eyed boys of political parties with every government claiming to be a farmers’ government.

It is not as if only political parties are on the wrong side but farmers also are allowing themselves to be viewed as a vote bank and becoming pawns in political chess game.

For example, the undivided Anantapur district is having the world’s largest groundnut acreage. The peanuts if commercially exploited could have emerged as an export hub with great demand for nuts and peanut butter in the USA and Western countries. The government could have thought on those lines and established common facility centres and processing facilities but government never viewed it as a business venture with potential to earn millions of dollars as foreign exchange.

Government’s never thought beyond subsidies and paying hundreds of crores as compensation. These bankrupt policies emerged out of electoral politics. Every year, the political parties, government, farmers and the media sing the same old song of crop failure and government relief.