ONGOLE: District agriculture marketing department is going to implement a four-point action plan to ensure minimum support price (MSP) for the farmers for their agriculture produce.
This action plan will be implemented from January 2020, across the district. According to this, all Farm Producers’ Organisations (FPOs) should be linked with merchants.
All agriculture market committees (AMCs) will conduct weekend shandy, where farmers will sell their products directly to consumers.
All necessary licences will be issued to the merchants, who will purchase the products from farmers through the AMCs. Marketing committees will also provide free warehouse/godown facility to the traders, who will purchase agriculture products from the farmers by paying more than the announced MSP.
In addition, they are going to develop an application, which will provide all related information about various varieties of farm products and the name of farmers, who cultivated those varieties, their yield, income, profit etc. This App will be developed by an organisation called Jeeva Bhoomi.
In a bid to provide the farmers with MSP for their produces, District Collector P Bhaskar had directed the district Agriculture Marketing wing authorities to take necessary steps. Accordingly, the Marketing wing officials chalked out a plan with four points, including organising weekend shandy, linking FPOs and traders, providing free godown facilities to those traders, who purchase agriculture produce for more than the announced MSP and issuing all necessary trade licences to the merchants.
According to the information, there are 15 AMCs in the district and only the Addanki committee is organising the weekend shandy regularly. The Maddipadu committee reportedly conducted this for some time but stopped later.
Now the marketing authorities are mulling on conducting weekend shandy again at the areas concerned. Apart from this, authorities will also make business agreements with some private corporate organisations, such as Reliance, More and Big Bazaar. As per their requirement, the FPOs will produce agriculture products in suitable cost. About 56 FPOs of the district are trying to sign such agreements with companies.