Gandhinagar: The new three farm laws announced by the Modi government are not appealing to a section in Punjab. One of these laws, is about contract farming. As per government, the contract farming law is going to change the fortunes of the farmers. A few opposition parties and some farmer organizations claim that this farm law will make the corporates dominate the farming, the farmers will end up in becoming just laborers.

Contract farming has been in India for past 30 years and is being cultivated in millions of hectares including in Gujarat, Maharashtra and many states of South India. However, contract farming is also been on for many years in Punjab, but the farmers seem to be the most agitated here. Most interestingly, Punjab also enacted contract farming at the state level in 2013.

World popular cola drink maker, PepsiCo was one of the first companies to make Pepsi Cola, which first tried its hand in contract farming in Punjab and is still doing contract farming in state today. In Punjab, PepsiCo is not the only company engaged in contract farming, but there are many companies such as LT Food, EBRO Food and Sun Star Overseas have been doing contract farming there.

If the contract farming was so bad, why would telecom giant Bharti Airtel’s ‘Fieldfresh’ and other companies like ITC, Patanjali, Dabur, Godrej Agrovet including would have grown in agriculture sector. Contrary to farmers’ fears and beliefs, in reality, not a single company of Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Group is directly or indirectly has got in contract farming.

Today, those who have experienced and appreciated the contract farming in past, have joined the protest. Now, these farmers are also opposing many issues apart from contract farming. Factually, not a single farmer in the country has lost his land to any corporate or private company. Instead, the income of the farmers who went for contract farming in Punjab and other part of the country has gone up and their level of risk gone down.

In India, depending on rain irrigation, farmers have been taking two types of risk, one is market risk and the other is protection risk. Under contract farming, corporates or private companies do take such risks on their head, to a large extent. In such situation, farmers do not need to worry about at what rate, their crop is being sold in which market. All such things are already decided.

Under contract farming, it is clearly mentioned in the contract that the corporate or private firm can neither buy nor sell the piece of land of the farmer. This preserves the interests of farmers. This means, those who are saying that corporate or private companies will seize the lands of farmers, is just a bluff.

The central government has also agreed to include the suggestions of farmers in the new farm laws and if possible, will also amend the laws. But still, the farmers are adamant. However, at present, the biggest challenge from the benefits of contract farming is, its equal sharing. Like big farmers, small farmers will also have to be brought under contract farming rules. The government will have to find ways to connect small farmers to contract farming. So that small farmers can shift reduce shift their risk to corporate companies by doing contract farming like big farmers.