“There has been widespread discussion at national level over farmers not getting due prices by selling paddy. A serious anger was created among farmers and it became an important issue. It cannot be accepted that people would not be benefited and get fair prices by cultivating paddy,” he told the parliament on Thursday.
Replying to a supplementary question, the minister also said, “We want farmers to get fair prices of their produce and it is also the principle of the government. The prime minister is also very kind to farmers and has been helping them in many ways. We’ve taken various measures to ensure the due prices for farmers.”
As part of the measures, the government will procure maximum amount of paddy from marginalized farmers, the minister said.
Razzaque further said that they are going to list the farmers in three categories—rich, middle-income and marginalized ones. “We’ll procure 20% paddy from the rich framers, 30% from the middle-income ones and the rest from the marginalized farmers.”
The list of farmers will be displayed at different upazilas and union parishads across the country, and the agriculture officers will inform the farmers about it. “We hope that the framers will get better prices than before following the steps, Agriculture minister said”
The government is working on formulating a paddy procurement policy which will be placed at the Cabinet soon, he informed.
Mentioning that the production cost of paddy has increased due to high labour cost, Razzaque said the government is going to provide the farmers with subsidy to procure expensive farming tools like harvesting machines.
“In the past, the government was in a dilemma as the country used to face famine for lack of paddy production and now it has been facing problem to ensure fair prices due to excessive production of paddy. We’re confident that we’ll overcome the problem,” Razzaque said.
