Farmers' groups urge Finance Minister to allow global trading of carbon credits from farms

Farmers' bodies and agro industry representatives on Tuesday urged Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to allow voluntary carbon credits from farms to be traded globally to enable farmers to get highest value.

These views were expressed by them during the pre-budget consultations held with the minister earlier in the day.

Ajay Vir Jakhar, Chairman of Bharat Krishak Samaj, a non-political farmers' body, who attended the meeting, said that an assessment of all government programmes should be done by beneficiaries to ensure optimum delivery of funds.

On the issue of crop burning, he said during the meeting that four years back, the Agriculture Ministry had designed a programme to subsidise crop residue management machinery, however no success could be achieved, leading to wastage of funds.

Jakhar tweeted about the issues raised during the meeting.

The farmers' representatives urged the Finance Minister to focus on human resources development over infrastructure.

Farm bodies also suggested imposing taxes on processed foods based on the products' nutrition value and on products high in salt and sugar content.

Representatives from various farmers' bodies, food processing organisations and institutions participated in the meeting.