Pradeep Singh, 37, gave a meticulous breakdown of the amount of money he spends to grow rice on an acre of his farm in Haryana’s Jhajjar district.
Pays Rs 4,500 to hire 10 daily salaried workers to plant the seed, Rs 3,600 to rent a tractor, Rs 1,200 for fertilizers, Rs 300 for urea, Rs 600 for insecticides, Rs 2,800 for pesticides, Rs 400 per worker to spray the pesticide and 6,000 rupees for 10 workers to harvest the rice.
Finally, it costs Rs 3,500 to rent a tractor cart to bring the crop to market and Rs 2,000 for diesel for the journey.
For all this work, Singh says, he earns about Rs 10,000 per acre, an additional Rs 5,000 if the harvest is good.
“The common man doesn’t know this,” said Singh, who lives in Mahandipur village in Bahadurgarh tehsil. “Even the government won’t know this [process]. Ask the minister of agriculture or the prime minister … or even the prime minister of Haryana. The real farmer is sitting here in front of you. “
Pradeep Singh is among thousands of farmers from Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh who have gathered in Tikri, on the Delhi-Haryana border since November 25 to demand that the Bharatiya Janata Party government repeal three new agricultural laws. They fear that the legislation will destroy the minimum support prices they receive from the government in key crops, leaving them at the mercy of corporations.
As the farmers headed to Delhi, they encountered water cannons, tear gas shells and police batons on the way.
Hundreds of tractors and cars have occupied at least 5 km of the Delhi Rohtak corridor on the border with Tikri. Farmers say they have brought food and supplies that will last them for six months.
On Tuesday evening, some agricultural leaders were invited to meet with Interior Minister Amit Shah, but the talks were inconclusive.
Earlier on Tuesday Scroll.in spoke to three farmers protesting with small or fringe properties about the economics of their operations and why they oppose the new laws.
Pradeep singh
He owns two acres of land in Jhajjar district, Haryana
According to the 2016 agricultural census, 86% of the country’s land is small and marginal less than five acres.
Singh earns a total of Rs 20,000 after six months of hard work on his two-acre plot that would not be enough to support his family, he said, so he rents another 10 acres of land.
To start this season, Singh took a loan of Rs 7 lakh from an intermediary. But in the end, he still had 2 lakh rupees of this outstanding loan. The lack of workers during the coronavirus shutdown made harvesting difficult, Singh said.
It was also affected by a broader dynamic: economic sanctions imposed by the United States on Iran, one of India’s largest rice importers. The sanctions hurt farmers like Singh, who sells his produce in Najafgarh, southwest of Delhi, 22 km from his village.
“We sold a quintal of rice for 2,000 rupees, but it used to cost 4,000 rupees,” Singh said.
As a result, Singh struggled to support his family and was unable to pay the 5,000 rupee fee to admit his five-year-old daughter to primary school.
But he had a more pressing concern. If the new laws are implemented, you may not be able to repay the loan you took from the broker even after the next growing cycle, although the man will not charge you additional interest.
Singh explained that the new laws do not guarantee that farmers receive the minimum price of support that they now get from the government. Instead, they will be at the mercy of private buyers.
“Suppose small farmers come together to sign a contract with a private entity and decide beforehand that they will grow potatoes and sell them for Rs 30 per kilo,” Singh said. “They give us the seeds and the fertilizer and when the harvest time comes, the corporations will come and buy it at the decided price, even if the market price is 50 rupees. They will not increase it.”
However, he said, “If the market is down and the price is Rs 6 per kilo, then they will argue with us while they shop. This will kill the farmers. Who will it go to? The SDM [sub-divisional magistrate] will not listen to the farmer. “
Under the new laws, disputes between farmers and buyers must be resolved at the level of a subdivisional magistrate, not in civil courts.
“No farmer wants the middleman system to end,” Singh said. “They [Centre] They are giving us a lollipop, we will continue to suck it but in the end we will suffer.
Gurpreet Kaur
The family owns 11 acres of land in Ludhiana, Punjab.
Gurpreet Kaur, a 48-year-old farmer arrived in Tikri on November 26 from the village of Chakar in Jagraon tehsil in Ludhiana, Punjab. She was accompanied by her husband and two teenage children. In Chakar, he grows wheat, rice and vegetables on 11 acres of land. He said that an investment of approximately Rs 20,000 is needed to cultivate one acre of land. This includes the cost of diesel, fertilizers, pesticides and daily wages of Rs 400 for 20 workers.
Once the harvest is complete, Kaur said, the produce is sent to a market 2 km from the village where the wheat is sold through an intermediary for Rs 1,880 a quintal.
“For us, our intermediaries are good,” he said. “We are free of tension if we sell him and he sells the wheat at a good rate.”
Kaur said Bihari workers employed in his fields had warned him about their experience after similar laws passed in his state in 2006. They “told us these laws were against farmers,” he said. “They said that [state] the government turned them into daily bets. “
This year, Kaur said the harvest was difficult because migrant workers had returned to their home states as a result of the Covid-19 shutdown. “The harvest was spoiled because we had no workers,” he said.
She said that after six months of work, her family had earned around Rs 1 lakh after paying her loan of Rs 5 lakh to the intermediary.
“Some don’t even have that much,” he said. “We wouldn’t be here protesting if we were rich farmers. These laws will make us poorer. “
Kaur said that farmers in his village have worked out a rotation schedule to come to Delhi for the protests. She was scheduled to go home on Wednesday.
But he noted that the protests had been taking place in Punjab since July. In recent months, Kaur has joined Punjab farmers in sitting on the train tracks to block passenger trains. “We sat all day … it continues to this day,” Kaur said. “We have closed all its [Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani] [petrol] bombs and shops in Punjab. “
Surjeet singh
He owns five acres of land in Lehra, Punjab
Surjeet Singh, 53, arrived in Delhi on November 27 from Lehal Khurd village in Lehra tehsil in Punjab’s Sangrur district. He grows wheat and rice on the five acres of land he owns.
He broke down his economy by acre. He pays 4,500 rupees to hire three Bihar workers, 2,000 rupees for diesel for his tractor, 2,000 rupees for fertilizers, 3,000 rupees for pesticides and around 6,000 rupees for workers to cut the harvest. His total spending on five acres is around Rs 1 lakh, he said.
This year, he joined two other farmers in buying a second-hand tractor for Rs 3.5 lakh. He had a Happy Seeder machine that allowed them to cut the crop stubble instead of burning it.
For a two-crop cycle, Singh takes out a loan every six months to cover these expenses. “The private bank gives around Rs 1 lakh,” Singh said. “Once the harvest time comes, we take it to the intermediary, who transfers the money to the bank. We don’t have much left. ”
If Singh gets a good harvest, he keeps Rs 20,000 per acre after paying off his loans. In addition to income from agriculture, he raises two buffalo that earn him Rs 50 per liter of milk.
Despite the difficult situation, he said farmers like him would be better off without the new laws. “Many farmers cannot deal directly with the banks,” Singh said. “Some farmers are illiterate and only use their fingerprint as a signature to deal with intermediaries. The intermediaries help them to put the money in the bank to pay the loan ”.
The village farmers have an easy relationship with their market intermediaries, Singh said. “We may even receive an advance of Rs 5 lakh from them because we know each other,” he said. “They are like a family. We would never call them bicholi [middlemen]. They are the ATM and the bank for us. “
Under the new laws, small farmers would be exploited, Singh said. “Big business will buy in bulk and loot us,” he said. Currently, it sells its wheat for Rs 1,880 a quintal in the markets. “If these laws are followed, no one will buy them even for 1,000 rupees,” Singh said.
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