In Farm Bill 2020, there are three agricultural bills (a. Farmers’
Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020, b. Farmers
(Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services
Bill, 2020, c. Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, 2020) passed by the Lok Sabha on 17 September 2020 and by the Rajya Sabha on
20 September 2020. The President of India, Ram
Nath Kovind gave his consent for
the three bills on 27 September 2020. The bills collectively seek to provide a
legal framework for farmers to enter into pre-arranged contracts and also
provide farmers with multiple marketing channels. We can see that in our
country farmers doing protests against these bills. Let us discuss what is the
Pros and Cons of these bills.
Firstly we need to understand the concept of these bills
which are mention above:-
The three bills
are –
·
Farmers Produce Trade and
Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020:
–
In
this, the government introduced the ‘One Nation-one market’ concept. Under this, the government allows farmers to sell their produce anywhere in the country. In other
words, government expands the scope of trade areas of farmer’s produce from
selected areas to any place in the whole country. Also allows e-commerce and
electronic trading of scheduled farmer’s produce and prohibits state governments
from levying any market fee, levy, or cess on farmers and traders.
·
Farmers (Empowerment and
Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020: –
Under
this bill, the government provides a legal framework for farmers to enter into
pre-arranged contracts directly with buyers, also including mention of pricing
of the produce. Through this, farmers will get the price assurance before
sowing the crop. It may be also defined as a Dispute Resolution Mechanism.
·
Essential Commodities
(Amendment) Bill, 2020: –
Under
this bill, government removed many commodities such as cereals, pulses,
oilseeds, onions, potato and some other products from the essential commodities
list, and removing stockholding limits on such items except under “extraordinary
circumstances”.
