“It has been established that when there is a price rise in the retail market, the benefit is not passed on to the farmers, who sell at low prices mostly. Therefore it should be called ‘Food Hoarding (Freedom for Corporates) Act’,” the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC) had said, adding it will lead to complete market domination by big compaines, which would dictate terms to farmers.
“Such restrictions were removed for all food commodities, which gave traders freedom to purchase and store any quantity, hence indulging in hoarding. The restriction was on agri-business companies and traders, which have the means to stock farmers’ produce. There was no restriction under the ECA on farmers or FPOs from stocking produce and selling it.
The preamble of this Act says that its purpose is “enhancing income of farmers” as the Essential Commodity (EC) Act 1955 didn’t talk about farmers or their incomes. Even Centre “overruled” the provisions of this law at least twice in past one year. They said people will die of hunger if it was implemented. The farmers said this law is not only anti-farmer but also anti-human, anti-poor and anti-consumer. In Bihar, following doing away with APMC Act, several village level touts, and small and big traders started controlling the crop purchase from the farmers, said farm unions.Įssential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020 “Aggregator’ means any entity, including a farmer producer organization (FPO) that acts as an intermediary between a farmer or a group of farmers and a sponsor and provides aggregation related services to both farmers and sponsor,” pointed farm unions. “Section 10 says ‘an aggregator or farm service provider may become a party to the farming agreement’. Further, Section 4 (1) & Section 4 (3) used several such words which could lead to creation of other middlemen within the system. They also said the words “sponsor” in Section 2 (g) (ii) and “farm service provider” in Section 3 (1) (b) were not clearly defined. Farmers argued that the third party in this section has been left undefined and it can be any person or intermediary and in such a situation it would lead to creation of multiple intermediaries such as commercial agents, arhatiyas and village touts. They said Sections 2 (g), (ii) Sec.2 (d) ,Sec.3 (1) (b), Sec 4(1), 4(3), and 4(4) of the law will create various types of middlemen.įor instance, the Section 2 (g) says: “A farm agreement is to be an agreement between a farmer and a sponsor or a sponsor or any third party prior to the production or rearing of any farming produce of a predetermined quality, in which the sponsor agrees to purchase such farming produce from the farmer and to provide farm services”. The farmer bodies, however argued that the new law will bring multiple middlemen in the new system and claimed that the legislation does no protect of farmers’ interest. In Punjab, arhtiyas (commission agents) act as intermediaries between the government or private players and farmers for procuring their produce. The government claimed that the law will remove intermediaries from the farming. Later, Centre proposed to amend the law to provide the provision to farmers to approach civil court.įarmers (Empower-ment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020 They could only approach the SDM or Deputy Commissioner. There was no provision under which farmers could approach a court of law in case of any fraud by the traders. “There was a fear among farmers that with creation of private mandis the existing APMCs will go and government will do away with the public procurement system under MSP regime and everything will be controlled by the big corporates and big farmers,” said Prof Sukhpal Singh, Principal Economist, (Marketing) Punjab Agriculture University (PAU), adding that with this Centre “overrides and undermines” the role of state governments. Farmers said that even in the proposed amendment the market area was not defined clearly.
#Farm craft 2 won't go past level 15 registration#
Instead of making provisions of registration to regulate the traders, the farmers alleged that the Centre was trying to pass the buck on to the state governments to regulate the traders in the proposed amendments, which were later proposed during farm union’s meeting with Union government. Any person with a PAN (permanent account number) is eligible to procure grains from the markets at their own price and hoard the produce. The Act has no provision to regulate the traders.