Ensure market for domestic agro products: Peasants’ Federation

The All Nepal Peasants’ Federation (ANPF) has demanded the government that it ensured market for the domestic agricultural products by fixing 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 fair value of their products and the market, while the middlepersons 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 agricultural produces. On the other hand, farmers are struggling without fair price of their products.”
For the development of agriculture, it is main responsibility of the state to provide fertilisers and seeds in time and provide market for the products, he underscored.

Saying people’s right to food sovereignty that was established through Nepali farmers’ movements are 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 farmers must be saved from the interference of the 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.