Giving much relief to potato cultivators, the state government has started procuring the staple food at the minimum support price from farmers in different potato cultivating areas.
It may be recalled that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had extended all support so that farmers do not incur losses due to excessive production of potatoes. She had announced that the state government will buy potatoes at minimum support price from farmers for midday meals. The process of procuring potatoes directly from farmers at minimum support price started on Sunday at areas including Tarakeswar, Balagarh, Polba and Dhaniakhali in Hooghly district which is the highest producer of potatoes in the state.
The district administration procured one quintal of potato from farmers at Rs 460. That means a farmer has sold a bag containing 50 kg potato at Rs 230. The rate has been set in such a way that the farmers will not incur losses and instead, will be making some profit.
With excessive production of potatoes, the farmers had not been getting the minimum price that they had invested for its cultivation. Farmers were getting only Rs 150 to Rs 160 for 50 kg potatoes. They would have incurred a huge loss this year if the state government had not intervened to buy the staple food at minimum support price directly from the farmers. The state government has decided to buy a total of 28,000 metric tonne potato for midday meals.
This year, production of potato in Bengal has touched 1.10 crore metric tonne compared to that of last year's production of around 97 lakh metric tonne. Thus, with the increase of around 13 lakh metric tonne of potato production, the rate per kilo had started falling drastically.
Farmers expressed their satisfaction with the step taken by the state government to procure potatoes from them at the minimum support price.
They said it would have been much better if the state government had procured the total produce at the minimum support price. Since it is not feasible to procure the entire production at minimum support price, the state government has introduced a single window system to help farmers to sell out their produce without facing any inconvenience.
At the same time, around 87 percent of the total potato production has already been stored in cold storages. The rest of the produce will be exported to Nepal and Bhutan. Some quantity of the staple food will also be sent to Assam and Odisha. In another important development this year, most farmers have stored their own produce in cold storages negating the middlemen.