New Delhi: The first anniversary of the note ban this week reopened wounds of potato farmers and cold storage owners in western Uttar Pradesh whose relations have soured over the last year due to financial woes and “unclaimed and dumped” stock of tubers.
With the shrinking of the cash economy in mandis over the past one year, there are no buyers for potatoes kept in cold storage and the farmers do not want to claim their stock or face the owners of these air-conditioned facilities who want to collect from them the charges for stocking their yield since February.
“In October last year, we were selling a bag of 50 kg for Rs 500-700 (Rs 10-14 per kg). The potatoes now sell at Rs 60-250 a bag,” said Rajesh Choudhury, a farmer from Hathras district.
“Almost 30 per cent of our yield is still kept in cold storage and the cost of transporting it out of the cold storage is higher than the prevailing market price for the stock,” said Chaudhary Pushpendra Singh, president of the Kisan Shakti Sangh (KSS).
“The market prices have still not recovered to the level of pre-note ban days. A farm loan waiver is the only way out for saving farmers from stress and starvation,” said Mr Singh.
The potato crop is harvested in February and stocked in cold storage units by farmers who pay a fee for using the air-conditioned facility that prevents the tuber from rotting. The stocked potatoes are sold over the course of the year by the farmers or cold storage owner —- whoever gets a purchase order from a dealer — and the cash collected is shared by the two sides.
If a kg of potato was selling for Rs 10-14 in pre-note ban days in 2016, Rs 2-4 were going to the cold storage and the rest was going to a farmer. The input cost for a farmer was Rs 7-10 and the rest was his saving.
“In the post-note ban days, the cost of cultivation has remained the same (Rs 7-10 a kg) but the returns have shrunk to half (Rs 3-5 a kg). The farmers have abandoned their stocks in cold storage as they do not want to pay the cold storage owner from their own pocket. The owners of cold storage desperately want to recover their cost of operation and are struggling to dispose of the abandoned potatoes as there are no buyers in the market,” said Mr Singh.
“Almost 80 percent of the buyers of potatoes use to deal in cash which vanished after the note ban, thus, resulting in unsold stocks. The suckin gout of cash led to fall in prices and ruined the farmers and the rural economy,” said Mr Singh.
A cold storage owner in Mathura, who did not wish to be named, said, “It has become a buyers market. We are desperate to sell the abandoned potatoes and the buyers are only willing to pay Rs 2 per kg (Rs 100 for a 50 kg sack). Farmers have said they are not going to come and reclaim their stock so it is better that we sell it off at our own level and recover a part of our 8-month cost of operation.”
KSS leaders said that in April there was a bumper harvest in Uttar Pradesh, which produces 30 per cent of the entire country’s potato yield of about 50 million tonnes. The farmers wanted the state government to lift stock and announce a minimum support price of about Rs 10 per kg — as it was done in 0ther states — but the new Yogi Adiyanath government did not respond encouragingly.
Some states like West Bengal promised to lift stocks of up to 28,000 tonnes at MSP.
Availability of less cash in the hands of farmers has also impacted this year’s sowing, with some peasants preferring to cut the use of fertilizers to half of the requirement to save spending. “Where will we get the money for fertilizers from? We did not even recover last year’s input cost,” said Pratap Choudhary, a farmer from Mathura.
Apart from a dip in sales of fertilizers, dealers of harrows, tillers and cultivators are also complaining of poor business that spans across districts like Hathras, Mathura, Agra, Aligarh and others.
