Ongole: Farmers meet Venkaiah over prices of subabul, eucalyptus

Farmers’ representatives meeting Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu in New Delhi on Friday
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Farmers’ representatives meeting Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu in New Delhi on Friday

Highlights

The members of the Andhra Pradesh Farmers Associations Coordination Committee met the Vice-President of India, M Venkaiah Naidu in in New Delhi on Friday and requested him to intervene and direct the concerned officers to fix reasonable fair prices for the subabul and eucalyptus, and help farmers in Prakasam, Nellore, Guntur and Krishna districts.

Ongole: The members of the Andhra Pradesh Farmers Associations Coordination Committee met the Vice-President of India, M Venkaiah Naidu in in New Delhi on Friday and requested him to intervene and direct the concerned officers to fix reasonable fair prices for the subabul and eucalyptus, and help farmers in Prakasam, Nellore, Guntur and Krishna districts.

The farmers' representatives Vadde Sobhanadreswara Rao, Ravula Venkaiah, KVV Prasad, V Rajagopal Reddy, M Srinivasa Reddy, and others thanked the vice-president for reacting on the gazette notification issued on the projects on Krishna River and conducting meetings with the Jal Shakti Minister and other officers on mistakenly listing the Veligonda project as an unapproved project and directing them for a correction. They said that the project will benefit the people of Prakasam, Nellore and Kadapa districts to a large extent.

The farmers explained to Venkaiah Naidu that the government officials, representatives of paper mills and farmers in Prakasam, Guntur, Nellore and Krishna districts agreed upon fixing prices for the subabul at Rs 4,200 per tonne and eucalyptus for Rs 4,400 per tonne, four years ago.

They said that the expenditure was increased exponentially in the later years but the farmers are being offered only Rs 1,200 to Rs 2,400 for the wood from subabul and eucalyptus, and the farmers who invested on the trees for the last four years were at loss with the prices.

They informed the Vice-President that they submitted a representation to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman to give instructions to the concerned officials and take measures to regulate paper pulp imports, fix reasonable prices to the social forestry farmers, advise the Forest departments of all States to increase forest cover from 22 per cent at present to 33 per cent minimum requirement by raising trees of long life in forest lands, allowing social forestry farmers to meet industrial requirements.

They also requested the Union minister to exempt the subabul and eucalyptus social forestry wood from the GST purview and extend credit, marketing facilities through the agencies.

The farmers' representatives requested Venkaiah Naidu to consider the issues with concern and direct the officials from the related departments to do better good to the social forestry farmers.

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