Kolkata, April 4 (Inditop.com) Potato farmers in West Bengal are battling a problem of plenty. Some are resorting to burning their crop as a bumper harvest has sent prices of the tuber nosediving, cold storage facilities are inadequate and refrigerated containers for exports are unavailabile.
The state, which is the second largest producer of potatoes in the country after Uttar Pradesh, grew 95 lakh tonnes of it in 2009-10, up from 55 lakh tonnes in the previous year.
Gopal Mandal, advisor to the West Bengal Progressive Potato Traders Association, said a percentage of the potato output was wasted every year due to lack of storage capacity. This year due to the high yield, the figure may go up to 5-10 percent of total production.
Finance Minister Asim Dasgupta admitted that farmers had suffered losses due to the high yield. There are also reports of some farmers committing suicide.
“To protect to some extent the interest of potato growers, potato will be purchased through cooperatives and the West Bengal Essential Commodities Supplies Corporation at a price of Rs.3.50 per kg and kept in cold storages,” he said.
The stored potatoes will then be sold through ration shops at a price lower than the market price.
“But as the production has been too high, even these initiatives are not sufficient to take care of the problem,” he conceded, disclosing that the government has procured potato worth Rs.400 crore from the farmers.
Local newspapers have reported farmer suicides in Burdwan district, one of the major potato-growing districts, after the Hooghly and Malbazar area of Jalpaiguri.
Naren Chatterjee, state marketing board chairman, however, denied such reports. “We have no reports yet of farmers committing suicides,” he told IANS.
Reports also said a group of farmers in a Malda village burnt large quantities of potatoes to protest lower price for the produce.
“The bumper production has far outshot the normal requirement. Around 60 lakh tonnes has been loaded in the cold storage this year,” West Bengal Cold Storage Association executive body member and former president Patit Paban Dey told IANS.
The state has 402 cold storages with a total capacity of 56 lakh tonnes where only potato is stored. Due to the high production, 400,000 tonnes have been kept in multi-purpose cold storages, sources said.
From the last week of December to the first week of May, potato from the field is consumed and from cold storage for the rest of the year, said Dey.
Apart from the 60 lakh tonnes in cold storage, 25 lakh tonnes of potato have been dispatched for consumption within West Bengal as also to Assam, Mizoram, Nagaland, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
“The remaining 10 lakh tonnes is in the field from where it is being sent daily to the market,” Dey said.
From the second week of May to the third week of December, when people consume potato kept in cold storage, the normal requirement in the state is 4.5 lakh tonnes per month.
“As the prices are low, the consumption may go up to 5.5 lakh tonnes a month this year, while another 5 lakh tonnes annually may be needed for seeds,” he said.
“But after all this, there is likely to be an excess of 10 lakh tonnes, which may be a wastage unless efforts are made to send these to non-producing states or abroad,” Dey said.
There is a good market for the state’s potato in countries like Thailand, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore.
But both Chatterjee and Dey said exporting to other countries is a big problem due to non-availability of refrigerated containers.
Chatterjee said the shipping ministry has been informed of this. “But so far they have not shown any interest in solving the problem.”
“Unless this is sorted out, there may be tough times ahead,” said Dey.
