Kathmandu: The All Nepal Peasants’ Federation (ANPFA) has demanded the government ensured a market for domestic agricultural products by fixing the fair value of products at the earliest.
The government should be sensitive towards making agriculture decent, and income and employment-generating by guaranteeing food sovereignty. This is in the context that farmers are drowning in debt without the fair value of their products and the market, while the middle persons are taking advantage of the situation, said the Federation President Balaram Baskota at a press conference organised here Friday. Stating that a majority of Nepali people are engaged in agriculture on which the country’s economy is based, he said, “Agriculture is taking a back seat due to failure to protect agriculturally produces.
On the other hand, farmers are struggling without the fair price of their products.” For the development of agriculture, it is the main responsibility of the state to provide fertilisers and seeds in time and provide a market for the products, he underscored. Saying people’s right to food sovereignty that was established through Nepali farmers’ movements connected to farmers’ prosperity and agricultural transformation, the Federation General Secretary Pramesh Pokharel viewed that the government should be serious about farmers’ protest that they throw away their products on the streets.
The despair of farmers must be saved from the interference of foreign products. The Federation has drawn the attention of the government to resolve problems of fertilisers, seeds and irrigation while expressing sorrow over the incidents where the farmers had thrown away their agricultural produce in protest. —–
Collected as a news link from https://onlineradionepal.gov.np/en/2023/02/11/346386.html