‘Hike Procurement Price of Cane to Rs 4,000 Per Tonne’
Tamizhaga Vivasayigal Sangam, led by Dr. M R Sivasamy, demands a hike in sugarcane price to ₹4,000/tonne, rejecting the state’s offer of ₹2,650. They seek transparency in sugar mills’ operations and urge ethanol production for additional income. The association condemns banks’ legal actions against farmers and calls for a paddy procurement price of ₹2,500/quintal. They demand NREGS support for farming, oppose land acquisition for industrial estates, and advocate for environmental norms enforcement.
The Tamizhaga Vivasayigal Sangam led by Dr M R Sivasamy has urged the State government to increase the state advised price of sugarcane to `4,000 per tonne as against `2,650, announced by Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa recently.
A resolution to this effect was adopted at the State-level sugarcane and paddy conference of the farmers body, held at Arakkonam on Sunday, chaired by its president Dr Sivasamy. The conference rejected the State government’s offer of `2,650 per tonne of sugar cane terming it as ‘meager’ and wanted it to be hiked to `4,000 per tonne immediately.
It also urged the State to take measures to make the sugar mills in the State pay the pending arrears to farmers who had been supplying cane to them so far. There must be transparency in calculating the recovery rate and weight of the sugarcane by the sugar mills. The State should also supply good sugarcane seedlings that could produce 60 tonne in an acre, so that the farmers would not feel the pinch of the escalating input costs, the association said.
Another resolution urged the sugar mills to bear the harvesting and transportation cost of sugarcane. Sivasamy said the country should follow the Brazil model, where 25 per cent ethanol from sugar was blended with petrol and used as fuel for vehicles. Ethanol production in sugar mills would be an additional income for the sugarcane farmers also, he added.
The meet also condemned the legal proceedings against the farmers by banks to recover the loans. As the district was facing deficiency in rainfall, the farming activities had also been affected and the farmers were unable to repay the loans, the members said. They also urged the State to fix the procurement price of paddy at `2,500 per quintal and open procurement centres in every taluk in the paddy belts of the State. They demanded that the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme should be utilized only for farming activities. They demanded a new scheme to support labour work for farmers for 100 days.
The sangam demanded that the ongoing land acquirement work for the SIPCOT industrial estate at Paranji in Arakkonam taluk should be dropped. The polluting industries which fail to adhere to pollution control norms should be closed permanently, they noted.
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