BHUBANESWAR: The Congress on Sunday demanded that the State Government should announce compensation of Rs 20,000 per acre for farmers whose paddy and vegetable crops were damaged due to unseasonal rains during the last three days.
A team led by chairman of Kisan cell of the Congress Amiya Patnaik, which visited areas affected by unseasonal rains, demanded that godowns should be constructed at all gram panchayat headquarters to store paddy.
Patnaik demanded that the State Government should raise the target for procurement of paddy from non-irrigated land from 12 to 15 quintals per acre and from irrigated land from 18 to 25 quintals per acre.
The State unit of Samajwadi Party (SP) also demanded that the Government should announce compensation for farmers affected by the unseasonal rains. "Farmers have lost their crops in Ganjam, Nayagarh, Khurda, Puri, Cuttack, Jagtsinghpur, Kendrapada, Jajpur, Bhadrak, Balasore, Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar districts," SP State president Rabi Behera said in a letter to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.
Behera alleged that rice millers would take advantage of the situation and farmers will face difficulty as authorities may estimate the weather beaten crops as of low fair average quality (FAQ). In the process, the farmers will be denied minimum support price, he said.
Similarly, vegetable crops have also been damaged and 'unscrupulous' traders and vendors would hike the price of vegetable in the market, he said, adding that potato, groundnut, mung and black mung crops have been destroyed.
Seeking early assessment of the crop loss due to unseasonal rains that lashed different parts of the State for the last three days, the SP leader demanded easy availability of interest free loans to the affected farmers.