Farmers Decry Government's Wheat Buying From Traders

HYDERABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 15th Apr, 2024) The Sindh Abadgar Ittehad, a farmers' lobbying group, has said the provincial Government was buying wheat from the traders instead of procuring the crop directly from the farmers.

A meeting of the board here on Monday, chaired by its President Nawaz Zubair Talpur, demanded that the provincial government should transparently implement the process of distributing gunny bags to the wheat farmers.

The meeting pointed out that the government could only buy wheat from the farmers and not from the traders who buy wheat at much cheaper rates from the growers and sell it at higher price to the government.

The Ittehad called for fixing the support price of cotton crop at Rs12,000 per 40 kilograms.

Speaking at the meeting Talpur said if the cotton growers felt discouraged to cultivate that crop owing to inflationary cost of growing and low market prices of the produce the country would be compelled to import cotton at much higher rates from foreign countries.

He added that the cotton import would put a further burden on Pakistan's depleting foreign exchange reserves.

The farmers at the meeting pointed out that their counterparts who were associated with the ruling party in the province were cultivating rice in those parts of the province where a complete ban on that crop had been imposed.

The meeting rejected the increase in the electricity bills and the corporate farming plans.