Govt must buy potato to save marginal farmers
20 February 2014
SURPLUS potato
production this year has created a new market crisis forcing farmers to
sell the produce at throw away prices to incur heavy losses. Farmers
demonstrated on Monday in front of the Jatiya Press Club and dumped
potato on the streets to highlight their plight. They also put blockades
on Dhaka-Rangpur highway at North Bengal to the draw attention of the
government to their hapless condition. They sought some sort of
government intervention to bail them out of the crisis but Agriculture
Minister Motiya Chowdhury ruled out any government help or buying the
produce at some support price to further highlight the overall crisis of
the marketing of the winter crops.
Experts said the government
can't ignore all together its responsibility pointing to the ongoing
free market economy when the farmers stand to lose everything. They
wonder why there should not be any demand forecast or stock analysis and
production guidelines before the new production season begins to help
farmers about their own production planning. The Department of
Agricultural Marketing can play an active role in this regard in
collaboration with the Ministry of Food and the Ministry of Commerce and
Bangladesh Cold Storage Association.
Market analysts held two
reasons responsible for this year's crisis. In one hand production has
surpassed by around five lakh tonnes the overall demand for 70-75 lakh
tonnes in local market, including 10 lakh tonnes for seed. Moreover, a
sizable part of the stocks held by business men in cold storage last
year could not be disposed of up to this time forcing most stockers to
remain partly absent from bulk buying at the field level. Consequently,
news reports said farmers are selling the produce between Tk 1.0 and Tk 3
per kg at most places against a production cost of Tk 6 on an average.
It highlights their plight in one hand and the absence of a policy
support of the government for farmers on the other.
We can't agree
with Agriculture Minister Motiya Chowdhury's suggestion that the
government is trying to export potato to Russia. It sounds like a
fairy-tale to farmers who don't know how to reach the Russian market. It
could have been advisable for the government to buy potato at the field
level at some support price and sell it to Russia through Export
Promotion Bureau (EPB) to recover the money. By hinting at the Russian
market the Agriculture Minister has in fact left the farmers abandoned
with their back on the wall at a time when misuse and misappropriation
of budgetary funds is enormous at the political end.
We hold the
view that the government must buy potatoes at a certain subsidized price
as part of the nation's food security build up, in addition to bringing
relief to marginal farmers who produce for the nation to feed the
millions at low cost. Any neglect to their cause may lead to a stiff
production cutback next year to destabilize the market in a reverse way.
We demand that the government must not ignore the farmers' genuine
cause and thereby leave it unattended. The consequences for the nation
would be tremendous.
