Hyderabad: The Prawn Farmers Federation of India last Wednesday (25th April 2020) has sought the intervention of Andhra Pradesh government to fix prawn seed prices and announce financial package to Covid 19 hit shrimp farmers in the state.
The federation has written a letter to Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy in this regard.
The letter says, “We are writing to on behalf of the Prawn Farmers fraternity of our State. Our prawn farmers have been badly hit financially by the ongoing COVID crises. The main causes of distress to our farmers are:
1. A sharp drop in selling price due to disruption in purchasing and processing factory operations, a sharp drop in international demand and buying price, severe disruption in the supply chain to the consumer market etc.
2. Loss of crop health due to Non-availability of health care inputs due to closure of interstate borders and shortage of labourers to continue farming
3. Unable to harvest ponds in time due to non-availability of labour, the supply of ice, vehicles and buyers.
4. Non-availability of farm supplies as suppliers are refusing credit supplies due to the uncertainties.
5. Severe shortage of working capital funds due to delayed payments from buyers.
6. Farmers are forced to harvest prematurely due to uncertainty of the market, lack of demand for mature sizes as buyers prefer small sizes shrimps which is unviable for Indian farmers.
After your timely intervention to have meeting with the exporters and fixing the purchase prices, thousands of frames were saved from deep distress.
Since our state produces more than 70% and most of the exporters are situated here, farmers from other 8 coastal states also benefitted from your intervention and price fixing.
More than 1 lakh farmers are thankful to you for saving them from deep crises.
Due to various supportive steps taken by the Central and State Governments to continue farming operation and production, our financially crippled farmers are trying to get back on their feet and carry on prawn production.
It is with great difficulty that farmers are coming back to their production activities. But now, they face a new set of challenges. These issues are threatening to derail not just prawn farming but the entire sector.
The threats are as follows:
1. Severe shortage of SPF brood-stock, which is always imported. Almost all of the brood-stock that was imported to produce seeds for this season has crossed their 6 months expiry period. We could not import new brood-stock due to the lockdown.
2. Spurious second grade seeds are being produced from brood-stock taken from farm ponds and sold to gullible farmers. These seeds will have poor growth and also carry diseases back to the farmers. The damage caused to the farmers and the sector by these spurious seeds will be devastating and it will have long term negative effects on the recovery of the farm production.
3. High prices of seeds. Hatcheries are taking undue advantage of the shortage of brood-stock and charging very high prices for the seeds.
4. Severe shortage of funds to restart farming operation. We once again request your intervention to safeguard the farmers and farming sector so that, prawn production can continue.
Our suggestions to safe guard our farmers and to continue farm production for exports are:
1. Fix the price of 0.30p for the seeds till end of year 2020- same price as before COVID crises which was 0.30p per seed. Farmers are already suffering from big financial losses. They should not be further exploited with high priced seeds.
Fixed price will bring stability in the market and encourage quality production. We request you to fix the seed price at 0.30p till the end of the year 2020.
2. Take stock of current availability of SPF brood-stock and publish the information. The Coastal Aquaculture Authority has the details of all the SPF brooders that are imported. Based on the import details, CAA or MPEDA or the Department of Fisheries can prepare list of brood-stock that have not crossed the expiry date along with the name of the hatchery that imported the brood-stock.
A physical verification can be done to ascertain the actual stock in live and health condition. This list can be published so that all farmers are aware about which hatcheries have good Brood-stock and who do not have. Farmers can depend on this Government published information to buy their seeds.
3. Facilitate the import of SPF brood-stock in large quantities. We have written a detailed letter to the Fisheries Minister of India and we have attached the letter herewith. We request you to take up this issue with the Central Minister and do the needful.
4. Monetary stimulus package from Government of India. We have sent a detailed letter to the Honourable Prime Minister of India, requesting for a stimulus package to help our farmers, who are badly hit by the COVID lockdown, to help them restart their operations.”
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