Friday, June 03, 2005

Agriculture suffers

In my native place, the main crops are paddy and coconut. In the spare time the crop is some dal and ground nuts.
From the past 4-5yrs, the variety of rice which i consume at home has costed me something around 18-20rs a kilo. Coconut costs something between 6-10 Rs.
This is good...thanks to all the treaties signed by the government and import of grains and some such stuff...Prices are under control, infaltion is less, food is available to a lot more people.

What does this mean to a paddy farmer?
From past 4-5 yrs the income for rice farmers has remained almost constant but expenses have increased. Everything has gone dearer. Power, water, petrol, lpg, education etc. He has to have these aswell.
Cocounut trees all over karnataka have been infected by some disease called as "nusi roga". The result - the size of coconuts have reduced and the number of coconuts per tree have reduced too.

How can the poor farmer survive?
This is the harsh truth of my village.

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