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COVER STORY: AGRICULTURE
...Cash Crops are in Ruins...
What happens when
you produce more than you can store, have stored more than you can sell,
and eventually sell for less than what it cost to produce? Thousands of
potato farmers in the Terai region in Uttar Pradesh are confronted with
such questions, thanks to a bumper crop that has caused a tragic mismatch
in demand and supply.
Potato is the primary crop in the region, with
more than 80 per cent of the farmers growing the tuber. The region accounts
for more than 25 per cent of the total potato produced in the country.
Potato farmers store the potato in cold storages for about Rs 80 per quintal,
taking it out and selling it before the arrival of the new crop.
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Bumper Waste: Lack of post-harvest
facilities cause distress sales.
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"My input
costs have quadrupled in 10 years. Gamabhai
Karsanbhai, Gandhinagar, Gujarat
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Gamabhai Karsanbhai Chaudhary is a compulsive
flirt. In the past 10 years, he has tried four crops-mustard, castor,
cotton and wheat-on his seven-acre farm, each change dragging him
deeper into debt. It was not lack of water that let Karsanbhai down.
It is only that his input costs have risen four times in the past
decade while the selling price has only doubled. |
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But the bumper potato crop this year has queered
the pitch. The fresh potato crop, which usually fetched Rs 180-200 for
a quintal, was available for about Rs 93 a quintal. So there were no takers
for the old stocks. Many farmers did not even take out their produce from
the cold storages, fearing that it would not even fetch the Rs 80 storage
charges. Saddled with potato stocks that nobody wanted, cold storage owners
dumped the tuber on the roadsides and in open fields.
Raj Kumar from Mehrai village in Farrukhabad
is one of those farmers who didn't pick up their crop because of the crash
in potato prices. "I had to mortgage my five bighas of land when
I failed to repay Rs 10,000 to a moneylender," he laments. Gayadin,
another farmer from the village, is equally despondent. "I have three
daughters of marriageable age. But there is no way I can marry them off,"
he says.
The problem of plenty was echoed in Punjab,
where the Rs 100 storing charges exceeded the Rs 80 a quintal of potato
could fetch in the market. If
potato farmers have been pushed to the brink in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh
due to a bumper harvest, cultivators of pulses in Gujarat and Rajasthan
are in a fix because three successive droughts have played havoc with
their crops. Of the 41,528 villages in Rajasthan, 30,583 were declared
scarcity-hit this year. Pulses, which require more water, are the worst
affected, with productivity declining from 594 kg per hectare in 1997-98
to 364 kg in 1999-2000. Gram output fell from 869 kg per hectare in 1997-98
to 695 kg per hectare in 1999-2000.
While productivity has dipped, the input costs
have shot up. The mustard he grew on his 18 hectares in Jaipur district
of Rajasthan fetched Jagdish Chaudhary a profit of almost Rs 1.25 lakh
10 years ago. Today, he can hardly make Rs 25,000 out of it. "I have
not been able to add even a brick to my property since 1991,'' he says.
Om Prakash, who grows tomatoes on his three
hectares in Jaipur district in Rajasthan, is in deeper waters. His family
had bought a tractor in 1997 after a good crop that year. The crop was
good this year too but prices of tomatoes have crashed to Rs 4 a kg. With
his annual income down from Rs 50,000 to Rs 15,000,
Om Prakash is scrounging to pay the instalment on his tractor.
-Subhash Mishra in Lucknow, Uday Mahurkar
in Ahmedabad and Rohit Parihar in Jaipur
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