A maximum compensation of Rs. 50,000 per hectare will be distributed to the farmers whose crops were damaged during the Maha Season due to the chemical fertiliser ban, the Cabinet concluded.
This compensation will be distributed to the farmers as an incentive, said Agriculture Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage.
Accordingly, 1.1 million farmers will be compensated for eight hundred thousand hectares of crops, he revealed.
“In April last year, a decision was made to ban the importation of chemical fertiliser. Accordingly, farmers who have been cultivating in eight hundred thousand hectares of land during the Maha Season, 2021 had to engage in agriculture by using organic fertiliser. As the Ministry, it failed to supply organic fertiliser in time. The farmers could not be informed. So, the farmers’ production met with a decline. We as the government then made it clear that we will not allow farmers to be treated unfairly and would compensate for any decline in production. Accordingly, the Cabinet yesterday concluded to pay a compensation to the farmers for the damage caused to their crops during the Maha Season. So, we have decided to pay Rs. 50,000 per hectare as an incentive for the 1.1 million farmers who cultivated in the last Maha Season from next week for eight hundred thousand hectares,” the Minister noted.
MIAP
