Farmers are facing a double whammy during the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in Meghalaya, with the virus attacking rural areas more compared to the first wave and also cutting into incomes through the disruption caused by the lockdown to contain the disease.
Speaking to Highland Post today, secretary of the Pynthorumkhrah Farmers Association (PFA), T Rumnong, informed that 70 farmers in the area are in dire straits after they were forced to let their vegetables rot in the fields because of the closure of markets in East Khasi Hills.
Around 30 of these agriculturists are particularly hard hit because they have a large volume of vegetables ripe for the harvest, such as potatoes, cauliflowers and lettuce. Several tonnes of cauliflowers have already spoiled and been devoured by insects, causing massive financial losses.
The state government has arranged a temporary market space tomorrow but the farmers are not sure how much the wholesalers will offer for their produce.
“We don’t know how things will go tomorrow but we are hopeful that most of the farmers benefit from the sale and get a reasonable price for their hard labour ,” Rumnong said.
Although grateful to the owner of the property for providing the space for the temporary market, the farmers had wished to be able to utilise the parking lot in Polo, which is much more spacious.
The leaders of Ka Sur U Paidbah Ka Bri U Hynniewtrep (KSUP) recently met farmers of the Pynthorumkhrah area .
The KSUP had demanded that the Agriculture Department, through its 1917iTEAMS initiative, buy the produce from the state’s farmers at a minimum support price and waive half of the farmers’ Kisan Credit Card loans and other debts they might have incurred since the start of the pandemic.
