Kolkata: Confederation of Indian Small Tea Grower’s Association (CISTA) has urged Centre to recognise small tea growers (STG) as agriculture farmers and include them to form farmer producer company (FPC).
CISTA president Bijoy Gopal Chakraborty wrote to Union agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Monday about this. More than 2.5 lakh small tea farmers in the country were cultivating tea bushes and producing green tea leaves as raw materials, which were being processed in tea factories, he wrote.“We have seen the positive, effective and prominent economic growth by the successful running of FPCs. Small tea farmers are like traditional agriculture farmers only. But unfortunately, till date, STGs have not received any facilities of PM farmer welfare schemes like KCC, PMKSY or Kisan Samman Nidhi,” he added. tnn