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.

http://www.dailynews.lk/2012/03/29/news20.asp