Hundreds of farmers are gathering at the counters set up by the government for distribution of tokens and later at the counter where they are making payment for purchase of subsidised soyabean seeds and at one other where they are receiving the seeds. The gatherings are scary as not many are wearing mask or maintaining social distancing in view of the COVID-19 threat.
Farmers accuse the Agriculture Department for the trend. The department should have distributed the tokens in villages so that only those whose turn it would have been to draw the seeds would have come to the counters, farmers pointed out.
Officials, however, said that the farmers were acting in haste. “There is still about 15 days’ time for sowing soyabean crop,” an official said.
Meanwhile, about 60 % of the required 27,270 quintals of the soyabean seed has arrived in the district and will be distributed in the next few days. Nearly 1 lakh acres of land will be brought under soyabean cultivation this vaanakalam or kharif season.
