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| Producers urge govt to hike Bt cotton seed prices |
| BS Reporter / Chennai/ Hyderabad Feb 12, 2010, 00:07 IST |
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The National seed Association of India represented to the Andhra Pradesh chief minister, K Rosaiah, on Thursday to revise the prices Bt cotton seed to Rs 850 and Rs 1,050 per packet of single (Bolguard I) and double gene (Bolguard II) technologies respectively.
The state government has fixed the prices of Bt cotton at Rs 750 for a 450-gram packet of single gene and Rs 925 per packet of double gene technologies in 2006 and later reduced them to Rs 650 and Rs 750 per packet in 2008.
At this rate, the association members said, the seed companies were incurring a loss of Rs 50 -100 per packet. If the prices were not revised, they said that they would not be in a position to supply adequate quantity of seed this year and also would not be able to take up production of Bt cotton seed for the next year.
Stating that same prices were fixed for Bt cotton seed by the governments of Gujarat and Maharashtra, the association members said that they would also take up this issue with the chief ministers of the respective states.
Since 2006, the daily wages of agricultural labour had increased from Rs 60 to Rs 120 and the cost of other inputs like fertilisers and pesticides increased by 30 per cent. “However, the cost of Bt cotton seed has been reduced by 16 per cent by the AP government. The price fixation was arbitrary,” they told mediapersons.
With AP accounting for more 75 per cent of the total seed production in the country, they said that the other state governments were fixing the seed prices based on the prevailing prices in the largest state in south India.
Emphasising that the Rs 7000-crore seed industry in the country had not only invested heavily in research and infrastructure but was also providing direct and indirect employment to 2.5 million people in AP, they urged Rosaiah to respond favourably to their representation at the earliest.
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