Farmers of the country are hopeful of getting more funds and adequate insurance for their crops in the upcoming Budget to be presented to Parliament.

The farmers in Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir said that the successive governments have taken some policy decisions to improve the farm output but the benefits have failed to trickle down at the lower level.

"I want to appeal to the federal government that this time they should focus on farmers while preparing the budget. It should cover the insurance of the farmers and their families. It should also include risk coverage for the farmers because farmers suffer badly due to weather," said Sidhu Lal, a farmer.

The chief agricultural officer of Rajouri district, Sadaqat Hussain, who has been working with the farmers to help improve their output and sharing government initiatives with them, rues the fact that the government policies have not yielded much.

"The political party that was in power before although took a few steps , in reality it failed to show a positive outcome. Today farmers are actually struggling hard for the sake of survival only," said Hussain.

The Minimal Support Price (MSP) of food grain has been increased more than 100 percent over the past 10 years but it has hardly benefited the small farmers, who are either not aware of such policies or are forced to sell their produce to private procurement agents.

The Budget Session contains 44 items of financial, legislative and non-legislative business.

The first part of the Budget Session will continue till March 20 while the second part will commence after a month-long break from April 20 and conclude on May 8.

Source - http://www.business-standard.com/