Indian Farmers Stage Nationwide Protests, Want Agric Laws Repealed

Indian farmers opposed to reforms they say threaten their livelihoods renewed their push against the changes with nationwide protests, a year after laws on the liberalization of the agriculture sector were introduced.

For 10 months, tens of thousands of farmers have camped out on major highways around the capital, New Delhi, to oppose the laws in the longest-running growers’ protest against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

Thousands of farmers have spread out to different districts to ensure a complete nationwide strike aimed at reminding the government to repeal the laws introduced to favor large private corporations,” Rakesh Tikait, a prominent farmers’ leader, told Reuters.

The Indian Parliament passed three agriculture acts—Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020, Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance, Farm Services Act, 2020, and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020—during its monsoon session culminating on 23 September.

The three farm acts: Key highlights

1. Farmer’s Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020

This act allows farmers to engage in trade of their agricultural produce outside the physical markets notified under various state Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee laws (APMC acts).

* Promotes barrier-free intra-state and inter-state trade of farmer’s produce.

* Proposes an electronic trading platform for direct and online trading of produce. Entities that can establish such platforms include companies, partnership firms, or societies.

* Allows farmers the freedom to trade anywhere outside state-notified APMC markets, and this includes allowing trade at farm gates, warehouses, cold storages, and so on.

2. Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020

The acts seeks to provide farmers with a framework to engage in contract farming, where farmers can enter into a direct agreement with a buyer (before sowing season) to sell the produce to them at pre-determined prices.

* Entities that may strike agreements with farmers to buy agricultural produce are defined as “sponsors’’ and can include individuals, companies, partnership firms, limited liability groups, and societies.

* The act provides for setting up farming agreements between farmers and sponsors. Any third parties involved in the transaction (like aggregators) will have to be explicitly mentioned in the agreement. Registration authorities can be established by state governments to provide for electronic registry of farming agreements.

* Agreements can cover mutually agreed terms between farmers and sponsors, and the terms can cover supply, quality, standards, price, as well as farm services. These include supply of seeds, feed, fodder, agro-chemicals, machinery and technology, non-chemical agro-inputs, and other farming inputs.

3. Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020

An amendment to the Essential Commodities Act, 1955, this act seeks to restrict the powers of the government with respect to production, supply, and distribution of certain key commodities.

* The act removes cereals, pulses, oilseeds, edible oils, onion, and potatoes from the list of essential commodities.

* Government can impose stock holding limits and regulate the prices for the above commodities—under the Essential Commodities, 1955—only under exceptional circumstances. These include war, famine, extraordinary price rise, and natural calamity of grave nature.

* Stock limits on farming produce to be based on price rise in the market.  They may be imposed only if there is: (i) a 100 percent increase in retail price of horticultural produce, and (ii) a 50 percent increase in the retail price of non-perishable agricultural food items.

The legislation, introduced in September last year, deregulates the agriculture sector and allows farmers to sell produce to buyers beyond government-regulated wholesale markets, where growers are assured of a minimum price.

Small farmers say the changes make them vulnerable to competition from big business, and that they could eventually lose price supports for staples such as wheat and rice. The government says the reforms mean new opportunities and better prices for farmers.