Farmers welcome governments plan to buy pulses at higher MSP

The Agricultural Production Commissioner and Principal Secretary (Agri) Gagandeep Singh Bedi on Tuesday announced that 4,625 tonnes of green gram would be purchased by National Cooperative Marketing Federation (Nafed) through the Regulator Markets or Farmers Producers’ Organisations and urged the farmers to register themselves for availing the facility. 

This has received a good response from the green gram cultivators in the Delta region. According to the officials, green gram was cultivated in an area of 30,000 acres in Tiruvarur while in Nagapattinam, 20,000-acre land was used for the cultivation of the crop. Moreover, in Thanjavur, 10,000-acre land was utilised for cultivating green gram, which is a short-term variety.

“The state government had extensively promoted summer crop scheme and encouraged the farmers to undertake pulses cultivation due to poor water availability prior to the Monsoon. Now, many districts are ready to harvest the green gram which has a decent yield of up to 2 tonne per acre and certainly boosts their income,” said N Veerasekaran, State spokesperson of Bharatiya Kisan Sangh.

In Tiruchy, green gram was cultivated in the Lalgudi region in an area of 1,700 acres with the sprinkler facility and the crop is ready for harvest now. 

The farmers felt that the MSP was a decent one this time as they used to get less than Rs 1,000 per quintal earlier. However, this time, the Centre has increased the MSP with the margin of Rs 1,475 than the current market price. The Nafed has decided to buy green gram at Rs 69.75 per kg while the current market price is Rs 50 to 55 per kg. This would prompt the farmers to opt for these government-regulated markets and they won’t have to go in search of traders. 

Since, the pulses are 65-day crops and the cultivation needs minimal irrigation, the micro irrigation method would benefit the crop. Therefore, the growth rate would be beneficial for the farmers and the pulse cultivators would incur more profit.

It may be noted that the Nafed had procured 1,550 tonnes of black gram (urad dhal) from farmers during the rabi cultivation season of 2017-18 at a rate of Rs 54 per kg while the market rate was Rs 47 per kg.