Farm Bill 2020

 

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”.