Cash crunch: Farmers find it difficult to arrange fodder, pay labour dues

VARANASI: Cash deprived farmers in Varanasi region are not worried about sowing the Rabi crops, but they are compelled to queue up at banks to withdraw cash for their daily needs like arranging fodder and clearing dues of field labourers.
Revealing reason for his struggle to withdraw cash from Chandpur branch of Union Bank of India, a young farmer Pramod Mishra said, “We have managed sowing of wheat crop.But queuing up at banks twice or thrice a week has become a compulsion for us. Banks in rural belt are unable to dispense more than Rs 4,000 to a customer in a day, which is insufficient to clear the dues of labourers, purchase fodders and manage daily expenses of the family.”
The farmers claimed that process of ‘paleva’ (preparing field for sowing) requires around Rs 2,000 per bigha of land and major part of it is given to labourers and tractor operators. Farmers having more than two bighas of land for sowing wheat are finding the money being given by banks in a day as insufficient.
Ashok Mishra of Chandpur said that farmers had no problem in arranging seeds and fertilizers due to demonetization. As the tractor owner and private tubewell operators also facing similar cash crunch they all are ready to cooperate and take payments after normalization of situation. But, payment of field cannot be stopped for long. Standing in bank queue for more than an hour, another farmer Saroja said that this region had lost fodder during flood and had to purchase it from market now.
Disclosing why the cash deprived farmers did not face problem in arranging seed, director of Institute of Agriculture Sciences, Banaras Hindu University RP Singh said that only 30% of farmers in east UP go for replacement of seeds every year as they know that using new seed is necessary after three years. Due to it they are not facing problem in arranging seeds. But instead of staying at their fields, they are bound to stand in queues at banks to arrange cash for other works.
Bharatlal Gupta of Chahania in Chandauli and Manish Patel of Kanudih, who are engaged in dairy and vegetable cultivation apart from traditional cultivation of paddy and wheat, said that they never faced crisis of cash because the markets of milk and vegetable did not see any disturbance. District agriculture officer Subhash Maurya said that the number of farmers involved in dairy and vegetable cultivation apart from traditional cultivation of wheat and paddy is high in the district.