Social forestry planters look to govt. for help
The Hindu
With falling prices for subabul and eucalyptus, farmers are shifting to tobacco crop in Prakasam
Vexed with growing commercial crops like tobacco and cotton, farmers in Prakasam district switched over to social forestry plantations in a big way in the 1990s. The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development(NABARD) too had encouraged farmers in the shift as many of them had committed suicides due to unremunerative prices for the two crops back then.
But now, farmers across the district are ruing their fate as the prices of social forestry crops like subabul, eucalyptus fell by 40% of the rates prevailing in 2014. The area taken up by these crops too fell from over 2.20 lakh acres in 2014 to about 1.80 lakh acres as a section of growers switched back to tobacco.