BHOPAL (Madhya Pradesh): Moong cultivators continued with their protest against state government Moong policy 2024 demanding the government to make amendments as the existing policy will incur a loss up to Rs 1500 crore on the farmers.
The protest is centred in Harda and Narmadapuram which contribute more than 50% to State's total production of the crop. Moong is cultivated in 32 districts of Madhya Pradesh.
This year, moong production stood at around 20 Lakh Metric ton (MT) in MP, which generally ranges between 15 lakh MT to 16 lakh MT. The government will purchase around 3 lakh to 4 lakh metric ton Moong at Minimum Support Price (MSP), while the cultivators will have to sell the rest in the open market at MRP which is Rs 1,000 less than the MSP (Rs 8,585 per quintal). Thus the total loss the farmers would incur comes to around Rs 1,500 crore.
Bharatiya Kisan Sangh(BKS) state president Kamal Singh Anjana said, 'As per the new moong policy, the government will purchase 8 quintal per hectare at MSP. Earlier, it was 16 quintal per hectare. Besides in a single day, only 25 Kg will be purchased in mandi, while earlier, it was full trolley around 40 kg. Farmers will have to stay two days in mandi to sell their produce.'
Kedar Sirohi, farmer, said, 'New moong policy will incur loss upto Rs 1,500 crore to farmers as hardly 3-4 lakh MT of the total produce will be procured by the government at MSP. Total Moong production stands at around 20 Lakh MT and so the 15 Lakh MT will have to be sold in open market at MRP which is Rs 1000 less than the MSP. So the loss will come to around Rs 1500 crore.'
Chandrakant Gaur, another farmer, said, 'Moong policy has provision of weighing the produce on small weighing machine, while we are demanding big weighing scale which is generally used to in weighing other produce.'
Secretary agriculture M Selvendran said, 'The Central government policy is to boost market maintaining equilibrium between MRP and MSP as the government always faces loss of Rs 2000 per quintal after storage. Currently, MRP ranges between Rs 7,500 to Rs 7,900 and MSP is around Rs 8,500. Better quality produce will be paid Rs 8,000 per quintal in the open market. We will procure 3.5 LMT from farmers.'
