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What is the Farm Bill

Indian agricultural bill 2020 refers to three bills passed by the Parliament of India on 27 September 2020. Collectively the bill deals to provide the farmer with multiple marketing channels and provide a legal framework for farmers to enter into pre-arrange contracts. The farm bill is a proposal of legislation passed roughly once in every five years that features a significant impact on farming livelihoods, how the food is grown, and what kinds of foods are grown, and at what quantity they are produced. The farm bill sets the stage for our food and farm systems and thus it connects the farmers to society. No doubt farmers are the backbone of our livelihoods. No technologies can ever meet their hard work and dedication of their farming and precisely connections with the country. The farm bill expires and is updated in the cycle of every five years. It goes through a significant process where firstly the bill is proposed and projected in the Parliament then debated and passed by Parliament of India and is then signed into law by the President. It was noted that centralization was reducing competition and participation in the market and Monopoly of associations damaging the agricultural 6 sectors. So, a committee consisting of 7 Chief Ministers was set up in July 2019 to discuss implementation. Accordingly, the center promoted 3 ordinances that were passed in the first week of June 2020. The three agricultural farm acts that are introduced by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Narendra Singh Tomar. They are as follows:- 1. Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotions and Facilitation) Act, 2020 - This act allows for the intra and inter-state trade of farmer's produce beyond the premises of Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) markets and alternative markets notified beneath the state APMC Acts or outside the states. The Act on Agriculture market permits the farmers to sell their farm produce outside the APMC mandis to whoever they want, even at their farm gates. Although commission agents of the mandis and states might lose their commissions(the main reasons for the current protests). But farmers can get better prices through competition and cost-cutting on transportation. This will help them to enhance their growth. It also prohibits state governments from imposing a tax or any market fee, cess, or levy on farmers, traders, and electronic trading platforms for the trade of farmers conducted in an ‘outside trade area’. 2. Farmer's (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Service Act, 2020 - This act includes a security assurance of the farmers because it creates an attentive framework for a contract through an agreement between a farmer and a buyer before the production of any farm produces on pre-agreed prices of their production. This will help small and marginal farmers to stand on the safe facet as the result of the introduced bill will transfer the risk of stock market unpredictability from the farmer to the sponsor and traders. 3. Essential Commodities (Essential) Act, 2020- It is an act of the Indian Parliament which was enacted in 1955 to ensure the delivery of certain commodities or products, the supply of which if deadlocked attributable to black-marketing would affect the conventional life of the individuals. This act removes some foodstuff from the list of essential commodities such as cereals, pulses, potatoes, onions, edible oilseeds, and oils. This provision can attract the private or corporate sector for direct investment into the agriculture sector. The key provisions of new farm laws area units are intended to help small and marginal farmers (86% of total farmers) who don’t have the means to either bargain for their manufacture to induce a more robust price or invest in technology to enhance the productivity and efficiency of farms.

Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020

The Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce ordinance was passed in the Lok Sabha, on 5 June 2020. The Bill later became an Act on 27 September 2020, after the validation of Rajya Sabha and the Indian Government. The act allows the Indian farmers to trade within and beyond their domiciled state. Farmers can directly contact the companies and retailers without the physical participation of the mediators like Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) market yards (mandis) and other markets. The act also permits the trade-in outside trade areas like farm gates, warehouses, factory premises, silos, and cold storage. With the prohibition of state governments from including the tax on farmers and trades for trading in such areas. Along with that, it allows the electronic trading of farmers' produce with the facilitation of direct and online trade through electronic devices and the internet. The provisions of the act allow certain entities to set up an operative trading platform for companies, partnership firms, and registered societies with Pan Card as well as the Agricultural Cooperative Societies and Farmer Producer Organisations. It is necessary to follow the Pan Card certitude or else, its violation would lead to stringent penalties. The act is primarily brought to give farmers the freedom of choice to sell their crop yields interstate, as per their convenience. The certitude of selling their crop through APMC Mandis no longer exists. The act aims at regulating the sale of agricultural yield so that farmers could get fair prices. However, it has been observed in recent years that only a limited number of traders operate in these APMC markets, which eventually reduces competition. The act eventually restricts farmers to sell their crop yield to the mediators and rather settle for the price they can directly get through the companies or retailers.

Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020

On September 14, 2020, three bills "focused on the change of agribusiness in the nation and raising farmers' pay" were presented in the Lok Sabha – the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Understanding of Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020; the Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020; and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, 2020. The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill was presented by Narendra Singh Tomar, Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Rural Development, Panchayati Raj, and Food Processing Industries. It turned into an Act on September 27, 2020. Provisions: The Act obliges a public system on cultivating arrangements that 'guarantees and empowers' ranchers to draw in with agri-business firms, processors, wholesalers, exporters, and immense retailers, for ranch services and selling. The Government proclaims that the Act protects ranchers' regarding agribusiness firms, processors, wholesalers, exporters, or immense retailers for the homestead administrations and offer of future developing produce by a commonly agreed to compensate esteem framework sensibly and clearly through an understanding. The Act accommodated a 3-level dispute settlement system by the assuagement board, Sub-Divisional Magistrate, and Appellate Authority. The arrangement needed to accommodate a mollification board just as an appeasement cycle for the settlement of debates. Let’s comprehend key highlights of the ordinance elaborately: Farming compact: The Ordinance provides for a farming arrangement between a farmer and a purchaser before the production or raising of any farm produce. The minimum time of a pact will be one harvest season or one production cycle of livestock. The maximum period is five years except if the production cycle is over five years. Valuation of cultivating produces: The cost of farming produce should be referenced in the deal. For costs exposed to variation, an ensured cost for the item, and a reasonable reference for any extra sum over the ensured cost must be determined in the deal. Further, the procedure of price determination must be referenced in the deal. Dispute Settlement: A farming agreement must provide for a pacification board as well as a conciliation procedure for the settlement of conflicts and debates. The Board ought to have a reasonable and adjusted representation of parties to the agreement. Primarily, all questions must allude to the board for resolution. On the off chance that the debate stays uncertain by the Board following thirty days, parties may move toward the Sub-divisional Magistrate for resolution. Parties will have a privilege to engage an Appellate Authority (directed by gatherer or extra gatherer) against choices of the Magistrate. Both the Magistrate and Appellate Authority will be expected to discard a debate within thirty days from the receipt of the application. The Magistrate or the Appellate Authority may force certain punishments on the parties repudiating the agreement. In any case, no action can be made against the agricultural land of the farmer for the redemption of any levy. Condemnation The Act was met with wide criticism from farmers everywhere in the nation. There have been nationwide conflicts by farmers particularly in Haryana, Punjab, and western Uttar Pradesh mainly under the contention that, with no guideline, farmers' interests will be ignored. Since the Appellate Authority was the most elevated level of interest for a farmer against any private entity, the farmer is effectively kept from moving the Court. In this manner, the Opposition parties guarantee that the Act is profoundly slanted for private substances as the individual ranchers didn't have the resources that privately owned businesses had.

Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020

The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020 is one of the three key ranch constitutions previously passed in India. It modifies the Essential Commodities Act which was passed in 1955 to negotiate with the control of the output, allowance, and distribution of and market and industry in, specific commodities which are proclaimed as 'essential commodities' and established in the 'Schedule' to that Act. Essential Commodities:- The Essential Commodities Act, 1955 certified the Union Government to establish "essential commodities" in the above announced 'Schedule ' and thus restraint the output, allowance, and ratio of that commodity and compel a product limit. At last, the "Schedule" comprised seven commodities i.e. drugs; fertilizers, whether inorganic, organic, or varied; foodstuffs, including nutritive oils; hank yarn made from cotton; petroleum outputs; jute materials and seeds of food products, fruits, and vegetables. Face masks and sanitizers were included in this list, in the best attention of the public at large, from March 13, 2020, to crack down on hoarding and black transaction in the wake of Covid-19 eruption, to improve their allowance and prevent collecting, in the fight to check the stretch of a pandemic. Erstwhile law and justification of Amendment:- At the time, when this law was originally generated, India was not self-reliant in food grains output. But now the circumstance has changed and therefore, this amendment was entailed as a part of the procedure of globalization. And also, the government is steadily and securely pursuing the agreement of abolishing all unnecessary regulations on the action of welfare, coupled with the trimming of 'essential commodities ' list to facilitate the free exchange besides safeguarding the customer's interest in common and the farmer's interest in local. The pastoral note indicated that the production of wheat has risen by 10 times ( from less than 10 million tonnes in the year 1955-56 to more than 100 million tonnes in the year 2018-19); during the same duration, the production of rice has risen more than four times from approximately 25 million tonnes to 110 million tonnes. India has now evolved as an exporter of various farming crops signifying the erstwhile law anachronistic. Further, according to the Economic Survey, 2019-2020, the systematic and unexpected imposition of blanket product barriers on properties under the Essential Commodities Act neither brings down rates nor decreases price elusive. Deregulation of foodstuffs:- The unreasonable regulatory administration verified destructive for the rise of the farming sector. The amendment law invests that the union government can operate the allowance of specific foodstuffs comprising grains, pulses, potatoes, onions, and oils, only under the tremendous conditions which comprise war, starvation, and tremendous price increase. The main item is to assure 'proper distribution' of foodstuffs and they're' 'availability at reasonable rates ' in enormous circumstances as against 'regular-routine law administration'. Reduction of stock limit action:- The law now declares that any activity on the imposition of the product limit on farming generate must be based on expense rise. A product limit may be committed only if there is 100% growth in the retail expense of horticultural crops or 50% growth in the commercial expense of non-perishable farming food commodities. The growth will be evaluated over the price occurring instantly preceding 12 months or the average commercial expense of the last five years, whichever is inadequate. The modification, on one hand, deregulates the allowance of specific foodstuffs; whereas, on the other hand, it also unfolds the floodgates for supplying which will direct to the restraining of frugality of scale and fascinate private/ foreign direct investment(FDI). The crucial modifications pursue to free farming markets from the restrictions formulated initially for an eternity of poverty and go a step forward to establish an environment based for relief of doing business by abolishing and exterminating the outlived statutory 'reviews and supervisions'. To wrap up, food from the plantation is not just a climax, but it is also an important component in the rise of human capital and thus, significant for revenue production.

Why are farmers protesting against it?

Farmers have 3 ways to sell their produce i.e., Local market, APMC (Agricultural produce market committee) or Sarkari mandi, and MSP(Minimum support price). Local markets, where farmers sell their products directly in their local areas. When they didn’t get a sufficient price for their product they moved to APMC( Agricultural produce market committee) which was established by the government in every state. These are also called Sarkari mandis. In India, there are 6500 Sarkari mandis. For Sarkari mandi, the government issues licenses to middlemen, Commission agents, or traders. Farmers take their produce to Sarkari mandi, where the quality test for those products is performed and then the auction is done according to the quality. However, traders buy those products from farmers. There is a tax amount to be paid by the traders is 0.528%, Which differs from state to state. Another option for the farmers is MSP (minimum support price) Where farmers sell their produce directly to the government in an amount fixed by the government. According to the farm bill, the state comment says that whichever crops are sold in private mandi will be tax-free. However, the tax that the government receives in APMC Will not be received by them. In some states like Punjab, the tax received by APMC Is more than 3500 crores. However, according to the farmer leaders, it has been said that if the private market is initiated then in the beginning there will be selling of products in an APMC because there will be zero tax in the private market. This may be beneficial for farmers in the beginning but APMC will be inefficient in the long run then this will be removed. When the private market holds the entire market, the government will lose its control over the market which will result in the entry of low-scale farmers. Apart from this, according to the farmers, MSP has not specified anywhere in the recent Bill passed that this will be carried in the future also. This leads farmers to doubt and question that will it be continued further. Moreover, Every year FCI that stores crops are spoiled due to the MSP facility. According, to the farmers, the government is not taking appropriate action to increase the storage facility for crops. So the farmer demands to give guarantee for MSP to be continued further, also sufficient storage for crops and most focusing to ensure that the crops will not be sold in less than MSP in the private market.

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