India: Farmers’ consortium objects to Centre’s seed licensing guidelines

Raising their objection on the Centre’s seed licensing guidelines, a consortium of seven leading national farmer organisations under the aegis of Rashtriya Progressive Kisan Association (RPKA) on Wednesday submitted a petition demanding immediate roll-back of the draft Guidelines and format for GM technology agreements.

The draft guidelines were issued by the Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmer Welfare in May 2016.

The petition opposing the guidelines was signed by over 325,000 farmers representing the demands from farmers of 23 States of the country.

Farmer leaders of RKPA met DS Misra, Deputy Commissioner (QC), Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare and Ramesh Chand, Member-Agriculture, NITI Aayog.

The farmers’ team will now meet Radha Mohan Singh, Union Agriculture Minister and Anil Madhav Dave, Environment Minister, besides other top authorities.

If India needs to assure its citizens of sustainable food security and low food inflation, it needs to help farmers by allowing R&D of seeds for both, cash and food crops both by public and private technology providers, they said.

In support of farmers, Renu Devi, National Vice-President, Bhartiya Janata Party, said, “States like Bihar and Orissa are with significant opportunities and can become big seed suppliers if agri-business is well taken care of. Innovation is the key here but the current state of affairs is quite unfortunate. We appeal the government to look into the matter and create a policy which will help poor farmers in the long run.”

The petitioners have also implored the government to not get swayed by the ‘anti-technology’ lobby and ensure timely approvals for commercialisation of new varieties of crops.

Raghupati Singh, National Coordinator, Rashtriya Kisan Progressive Association, said, “Farmers realised that the draft licensing guidelines is regressive and anti-farmer. If implemented, it will lead to complete halt in the availability of new technologies.”

Gunni Prakash, President — Haryana & Punjab, All India Kisan Coordination Committee, further added, “Restricting the free flow and sale of appropriate technologies threatens this fragile ecosystem that has the potential to create another 50 million jobs by 2025. We are therefore hopeful that the government announces a roll-back of this arbitrary and ill-conceived price regulation.”