Farmers have demanded from members of the Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee of the House of Representatives the establishment of a government rice purchasing center in Kapilvastu and the facility of selling rice at the minimum support price.
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Farmers in the district have demanded that the members of the Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee under the House of Representatives purchase rice from a government agency in Kapilvastu.
Local farmers made this demand to the members of the committee and members of the House of Representatives who came here on Sunday to inspect the seed processing center run by the Janasewa Multiple Agricultural Cooperative Society in Gajehada, Banganga Municipality-4.
Farmers in Kapilvastu, which is the largest rice-producing district in Lumbini Province, have said that they are facing problems due to not getting the minimum support price for rice set by the government. 'We cultivate rice with great difficulty. We have become disappointed in the agricultural profession as we do not get a fair price for the rice produced with our hard work,' said Dronnaraj Subedi, president of the Janasewa Multiple Agricultural Cooperative. He said that when traders buy at a price that is too much for their liking, the enthusiasm of farmers to cultivate rice has decreased.
He said that to sell paddy at the price set by the government, one has to reach Bhairahawa or Bardiya from the district. ‘There is a quota for that too. The price set by the government does not give us any concession,’ he said.
If the government can establish a buying and selling center in Kapilvastu, where coarse, fine and black salt paddy are abundantly produced, farmers will be more enthusiastic about farming, said Ghanshyam Chaudhary, head of the Agricultural Knowledge Center. Similarly, they demanded easy availability of irrigation, fertilizers and easy installation of subsidized agricultural electricity meters for fish farmers.
The MPs had taken information about the work done by the Janasewa Multipurpose Agricultural Cooperative, which is a large organization producing paddy and wheat seeds in the district. Since 2074, the National Agricultural Modernization Program has provided more than Rs 12.1 million in grants for the construction of warehouses, seed storage houses, and walls and the purchase of machinery, said program chief Rakesh Ojha.
Members of the Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee under the House of Representatives, including Dr. Sujata Tamang, Geetakumari Sendang, Tahir Ali Bhat, and Punamkumari Agrawal, came for the monitoring. Although there are 83,000 hectares of cultivable land in the district, 81,576 hectares are under cultivation. Paddy is being cultivated on 65,852 hectares. The productivity of paddy is 4.2 metric tons per hectare.
