Guaranteed paddy price to be increased
Nimal Wijesinghe- Anuradhapura additional District
Group correspondent
The farmer organization representatives in the Anuradhapura district
said that the guaranteed prices for Samba and Nadu per kilogram will be
increased to at least Rs 35 and Rs 33 respectively, to uplift farmers'
livelihoods by covering the paddy processing expenditure.
The submissions were made by them to the committee appointed by the
government to investigate into the possibilities of increasing the
present mode of guaranteed prices for paddy.
Paddy Marketing Board (PMB) Chairman K B Jayasinghe, Agrarian Service
department authorities, PMB officials and farmer organization
representatives were present at the paddy price review meeting.
The farmer representatives demanded the guaranteed price for paddy to
be increased by at least Rs five making the purchasing price for Samba
variety Rs 35 and Nadu Rs 33 per kilogram. They explained the paddy
processing mechanism from the stage of preparing land for paddy
cultivation up to the harvesting point.
They emphasized that they could not cover the expenses and make their
livelihoods by selling paddy to the government at the present guaranteed
prices which are Rs 28 for Nadu and Rs 30 for Samba per kilogram.
"We are lacking agriculture machinery such as thrashing equipment and
tractors.
"We are not educated adequately about the newly discovered parisoot
paddy cultivation system which doubles the harvest. Also, exploitation
by private sector traders should be dealt with. If the government makes
these facilities available, we will be able to reduce the paddy
production expenditure," the farmer organizations representatives said.
Anuradhapura Additional Government Agent K B Hettiarachchi said the
production cost of paddy shall be reduced to enable them to enter the
world paddy market since we were experiencing a surplus of paddy stocks
at present.
The reason was that the price of rice in the world market was lower
than ours and we were required to pay a subsidy in exporting rice, he
said.
He said that in the circumstances it was highly advisable to take
steps to reduce the production cost of paddy.
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