Farmers up in arms against govt over relief to selective crops

Anantapur-Puttaparthi: With the government declaring crop compensation to only tomato, sweet oranges and groundnut crops damaged by rains in the past, other left out farmers are up in arms against the government for selective crops as many other crops too suffered crop and monetary damages.

The government offered to pay climate-based insurance to cotton crop. More than 99 percent of sweet orange farmers are being covered under the crop insurance.

The government announced that it would pay crop compensation to only a few crops while paddy, yellow dal, banana, pomegranate, chillies and castor oil farmers who also suffered crop losses were left out.

Although horticulture farmers equally suffered crop losses along with agriculture crops, the former were ignored.

Chilli farmers too suffered huge losses with damages caused to hundreds of acres.

Even for tomato crops, not all the tomato farmers are covered. Even the quantum of compensation is meagre, says Rami Reddy, a tomato farmer in Kalyandurg. The government has announced a pittance of Rs 172 per acre of tomato crop. In Sathya Sai district tomato crop losses were shown in only 30,000 acres belonging to around 8,000 farmers and Rs 55 lakh compensation was sanctioned.

In Anantapur and Sathya Sai districts, 1.16 lakh and 1 lakh farmers of tomato, oranges and groundnut crops were zeroed in respectively. In Anantapur, 31 and in Sai district 15 mandals are covered. The farmers complained that many mandals were left over on irrational grounds. For cotton crop productivity linked compensation is sanctioned.