Cabinet nod for Rs. 192-crore corpus to help farmers fight crop damage

Uttar Pradesh cabinet on Tuesday approved a proposal for a new scheme that would set aside a corpus of Rs 192 crore to help farmers shield their fields from crop damage. Uttar Pradesh Agriculture Minister Surya Pratap Shahi said the scheme would help farmers tackle crop damage occurring due to pests and storage problems. The financial assistance would be for a five-year period – from 2022-23 to 2026-207 – and in the current year Rs 34 crore would be released under the new scheme.

“It has been noticed that farmers suffer about 15-20 per cent crop loss due to weeds, 26 per cent due to crop diseases, 20 per cent due to insect diseases, 7 per cent due to lack of proper storage facilities, 6 per cent due to rats and another 8 per cent due to other reasons on an average every year. Thus, the cabinet cleared the proposal to assist farmers in cutting down crop loss through weed and pest control as well as by providing safe storage for ready and standing crops,” Shahi added.

Under the scheme, weed and pest control will be done through different ecological resources. “The government plans to provide farmers with both chemical and biological pesticides on a grant from the Agricultural Defense Unit,” the minister added.

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The cabinet approved another proposal to provide 50 per cent subsidy on storage units — which have been approved for safe storage – for farmers. The state’s farmers will also get a 50 per cent subsidy on long-term storage of foodgrains in “bakharis” (special storage houses) with a capacity of 2 to 5 quintals. A government spokesperson said a similar scheme was launched from 2017-2022 as well and about 11.58 lakh farmers had benefited from it.

The Cabinet also gave its nod to a proposal for formation of new Nagar Panchayats – Kamakhya in Ayodhya, Sankisa Basantpur in Farrukhabad, Hetimpur in Deoria and Mathauli in Kushinagar.