BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha State Seeds Corporation (OSSC) is staring at a repeat of the Kharif 2016 when it sustained a huge loss of over `26 crore due to abysmally low demand from farmers for certified paddy seeds. The state-owned corporation have sold only 44,000 quintals of certified seeds so far as against 81,000 quintals sold during the same period last year.
Attributing the low off-take of paddy seeds to the insistence of the government for its sale under the direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme, farmers' representative in the OSSC Board of Directors Ashok Baral said farmers are not keen to pay the full cost of the seed upfront to get the subsidy later as majority of them are not financially sound.
He said the farmers want to buy the seeds from the OSSC-appointed agencies at subsidised rate as the DBT scheme is very complicated and time-consuming. The State government has adopted an old system of selling seeds at subsidised rate after the 2016 fiasco. However, the Directorate of Agriculture and Food Production has directed all the Chief District Agriculture Officers (CDAOs) to ensure that the kharif paddy seeds are sold under DBT this time.
“It is to inform you that the Department of Agriculture & Farmers’ Empowerment has decided to implement e-RUPI, a digital payment solution, for the sale of seeds from the season Kharif-2022 which is likely to be ready by mid of May 2022,” said an official letter from the agriculture directorate to CDAOs.
Issuing a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the transaction of seeds under DBT through an OTP-based authentication system, the directorate said the OSSC will sell the seeds at the all-in-cost price (including the margins of dealers/PACS/LAMPS, cost of transportation and loading and unloading charges).
Though the SOP said that the subsidy of the farmers must reach their account a day after purchase, Baral said large number of complaints of not receiving the subsidy are coming from the seed buyers to the corporation when the scheme officers and field functionaries of the Agriculture department are responsible for timely payment.
Sensing loss due to poor off-take of seeds, the corporation has decided to procure half of the seeds target fixed for the kharif season 2022. The government had set a target to sell 5.25 lakh quintals of paddy seeds to this Kharif.