Farm bill 2020🌾

Let’s start with understanding what’s this bill all about and what changes it has done in the farmers activity of selling their goods.

Well there are three bills introduced in the farm bill act. The first one is:-

1. The farmers produce trade and commerce bill 2020.

This bill allows farmers to sell their commodities outside the notified APMC mandis, in other words farmers now can sell their goods and commodities freely to any trader without giving fees or taxes to the state government for the trade they have done. This has also removed the restrictions of the inter-state trading of their goods. Also it has provided electronic trading a new boost in the agricultural fields.

2. The farmers agreement of price assurance and farm service bill 2020.

Now this bill allows farmers for direct marketing, in other words farmers can now sell their commodities at their price fixation which means here the farmers will become the price makers. This also means that they can select the trader giving them most benefit or they would sell their commodities direct to the market. Farmers now will make agreements to individuals for trade and can work on contract basis.

3. The essential commodities bill 2020.

In the last, this bill has deregulated movement, storage and production of many commodities of several foodstuffs which are and were in essential catagory. So cereals, pulses, oilseeds, edible oils, onions and potatoes are no longer the essential commodities. Well this done because the government wants the farmers to focus on other goods too. Now in some cases only the central government is allowed to regulate the supply of these commodities which are natural calamities, war, extraordinary price hike. Also it includes the imposition of any stock limit on agriculture produce must be on the basis of price rise. This may be imposed only when there is a 100% rise in retail price of horticultural crops and 50% rise in non perishable items.

So why are famers opposing this bill as it looks very beneficial to them? Well this is what we think but for the farmers the problem lies in different ways, so let me explain this how :-

The farmers in mainly Punjab, Haryana and in some parts of UP have concerns over the MSP( minimum support price) of the commodities which were earlier to this bill were in essential goods, so now they won’t be getting the MSP for their goods by the government and have to sell those goods by themselves for the price it has in market.

Secondly farmers were earlier exploited in the mandis by bigger traders in APMC, so they fear that because of this bill the bigger retailers would get even more advantage in negotiations, as farmers don’t have knowledge about the current price status of the market.

They also have problems in understanding how to fix prices for their commodities and whom to sell for better benefits.

So these were famers questions and fears and here are some points and doubts :-

So let’s start with the positive views on this bill, as per my perspective farmers are going to get a huge advantage in price fixation if they are guided rightly. As I mentioned earlier farmers had a problem in deciding the price of the commodities so the solution to it is as it’s all digital many sites have been posting daily about the crop rates in the market and their fluctuation. So now the farmers can go to through these sites to achieve the price details but for that they need to be educated right and have to learn digital technology.

I also think that now farmers would focus on growing more different crops than the usual one’s and have the freedom to sell them to any other states without the consent taken from the state government. The plus point is no fees or taxes would be taken by the state.

The bill has given attention to both farmers and retailers equally. Yet a very important point the bill has nowhere mentioned that MSP is scrapped so we will have to wait for the government to clarify that. Some sources say that the government has cleared that doubt but still let’s wait for a clearer picture.

My doubt to all this is, are our farmers educated enough to understand these complex digitalized way of trade and if not who will guide them? And what has government planned to protect them from getting exploited from retailers?

Now coming on to the negative effects which are very few but still can be a problem.

With this bill the state could lose heavy tax collection from agriculture sector, the bill again doesn’t give any backing to the MSP. This can also lead to eliminating the market intermediarers.

Hoarding and black marketing will become more common and will become a big issue in the following years.

Conclusion

The government should back the MSP and inform the farmers about that. Government should also take steps to aware the farmers about their rights in price fixation and should provide them adequate information about the sites to refer for trading and fixation of the price.

See as we all know India is suffering from a food surplus condition from many years and with this bill farmers will now focus on other crop plantation. So all in all government has to make some fixation in their policies so as to benifit farmers completely and to lesser the chaos.

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If you have any doubts feel free to ask anything in the comment box down below.👇🏻