NEW DELHI: Farmers’ organisations collective Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) will organise mahapanchayat in Tohana (Haryana) on January 4 and in Moga (Punjab) on January 9 to adopt resolutions to reject the new draft policy on agriculture marketing.
They dubbed the National Policy Framework on Agriculture Marketing (NPFAM) as more dangerous than the three repealed Farms Acts of 2019 and against the federal structure of the country.
The SKM said the NPFAM is designed to promote corporate interest by integrating agricultural production and marketing at the cost of the welfare of small producers and farmers.
The proposed reforms are want to redesign value chain-based capacity-building framework to integrate both the private and public sectors through advanced technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence.
“In the name of reform, the government effectively allows the private sector, specifically, corporate agribusinesses, to establish dominance over production, processing, and marketing,” said P Krishnaprasad, All India Kisan Sabha, a part of SKM. Also, the proposed laws will undermine the federal rights of the state government under which jurisdiction the agriculture market falls, the farmers alleged.
Farmers leaders analysed the proposed framework and found that the root cause of the acute income crisis faced by farmers is fundamentally social and political instead of technical reform alone.
Moreover, the policy document fails to address any provisions that would hold these corporate forces, including processors, traders, and exporters, accountable for sharing a fair portion of the surplus they extract from the market.