These demands, amid calls for a “relief package”, came on Friday at a meeting held at the office of Sindh Chamber of Agriculture, where a large number of farmers from the southern districts of Sindh had gathered.
The growers are suffering losses caused by natural disasters for the third consecutive year, noted Mir Murad Ali Talpur, who chaired the meeting. The crops of cotton, rice, sugar cane and chillies have all been affected.
According to the Sindh Agriculture Department statistics, cotton has been sown over 32,636 acres in Mirpurkhas, 25,238 acres in Umerkot and 15,426 acres in Badin. Similarly, sugar cane is grown over 37,635 acres in Thatta, 30,164 acres in Badin and 18,950 acres in Mirpurkhas. Badin produced 8,522 tonnes of chilly in 2011-12, followed by Thatta, Mirpurkhas and Umerkot. Thatta was among the top five producers of rice in Sindh last year. Talpur put the total loss at about one-third of the cultivated area. “A small or medium grower needs up to three years to recover the financial losses of just one year,” he said. Cultivation is mostly financed by private loans with high interest rate and when crops are destroyed it takes another two seasons to recover.
A grower from Tando Muhammad Khan, Nabi Bux Sathio, warned of a looming shortage of cotton, chilly and sugar cane.
Cotton growers are being paid a maximum of Rs1,500 per 40kg against the official rate of Rs2,600 per 40kg. “The middlemen are taking advantage of the rain and are exploiting farmers,” claimed Sathio. He blamed the government for conniving in the financial murder of growers by not monitoring the cotton sale price.
A Mirpurkhas-based grower, Zahid Hussain Bhurgari, urged the government to conduct a survey of the rain-hit agricultural lands and compensate the affected farmers.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 15th, 2012.
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