The Apple Farmers’ Federation of India has written a letter to Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar urging his attention into the crisis in the sector. Issues such us high input cost, lack of fair price and unavailability of infrastructure such as cold chains, were making the crisis worse for apple growers, they said.
They told Mr. Tomar in a memorandum that the unbridled increase in the cost of production, transportation and the cost of living due to unprecedented price rise had made apple cultivation unremunerative. "For instance, in the last two years, the costs of fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides, and other equipment like spray machines and tools, have doubled. The farm workers are also not paid sufficiently to live with dignity and face job insecurity. Hence they are forced to migrate to other sectors in search of better jobs and income. The small and middle peasants and agricultural worker households face widespread indebtedness, distress and resultant pauperisation. Even in this circumstance, the government of India is being insensitive to the demand of minimum support price at the rate of C2 [comprehensive cost]+50% and freedom from indebtedness by the apple farmers," the federation said in the memorandum.
It said the import of apple facilitated corporate control over the wholesale as well as the retail market. "Corporate houses make huge profits through multi-national trade manipulations. For example, Afghanistan does not have even one lakh metric tonnes of apple production; however, six lakh MT of apple was imported by our country from Afghanistan in the recent period! Such trade manipulations by the corporate houses are allowed by the Union government, resulting in the crash of the sales price for the farmers," the memorandum said.
They said the average global productivity was 60 MT per hectare, whereas India had only 10 MT per hectare. “Attaining global productivity standards in the apple sector can bring fivefold income to farm households. There is no effective government mechanism for procurement, transport and storage of apples accessible to the majority of apple growers in the difficult terrain. The much-acclaimed schemes by the State administration for high-density orchards and market interventions are non-starters,” they said in the memorandum. They called for effective research and development projects to attain global standards, and procurement, transportation and storage facilities by the government.
The farmers told Mr. Tomar that collective, cooperative farming would bring bargaining power to small and middle farmers. This would facilitate the pooling of resources in order to develop processing industries and infrastructure, including controlled atmosphere storage, cold chain transportation facilities and credit facilitation. "Cooperative farming will help to reduce the cost of production and transform petty production into large-scale production. Such innovative and real-time experiments only can resist the present exploitation of large trade capitalists and their intermediaries. Thus farmers' cooperatives can intervene in production, processing as well as marketing," they suggested.
