Cotton farmers staged a demonstration deploring the raids by agriculture officials and seizure of BT III cotton seeds and stoppage of seed processing, before the Kurnool Collectorate here on Saturday.
A.P. Rythu Sangham district secretary T. Ramesh Kumar and president A. Rajasekhar, who led the protest, said it had been four days since cotton companies closed their processing units fearing the raids. The companies directed the farmers not to bring their cotton produce for processing.
Memorandum
Farmers had no option but to keep their unprocessed cotton produce at home, after spending ₹2 lakh per acre to cultivate the crop, they said. They submitted a memorandum to District Collector S. Satyanarayana to hold discussions with the seed and processing companies and mitigate the farmers‘ plight.
