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| AGRICULTURE TRIBUNE | Monday, September 29, 2003, Chandigarh, India |
Farmer’s last battle, mandi Amarjit Thind AFTER months of physical labour and waiting, farmers are finally bringing their produce to the mandis, only to discover that their labour and problems are far from over. Considering the state of mandis and that the official procurement is yet to begin, it appears the challenges have just started. PROCUREMENT PAINS |
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Farmer’s last battle, mandi
AFTER months of physical labour and waiting, farmers are finally bringing their produce to the mandis, only to discover that their labour and problems are far from over. Considering the state of mandis and that the official procurement is yet to begin, it appears the challenges have just started. While paddy is being brought to the mandis all across the state, the procurement agencies will only start buying from October 1. Meanwhile, the shellers are making a fast buck by buying the produce from the farmers at rates below the MSP. While the official rate is Rs 580 per quintal, farmers are being paid Rs 525 or 550. Many farmers say they
prefer to sell at the price offered rather than wait for another four
or five days for the procurement to start. Another factor weighing
heavy on the mind of the farmers is rain, which can play spoilsport,
as has been the case for the past two years.
To get a general idea of the conditions at mandis in Punjab, a survey of Jagraon, Mullanpur, Sawaddi, Humbran and Pakhowal mandis in Ludhiana district was conducted by a Tribune team a week before the official start of procurement. It reveals that the condition in these mandis is far from satisfactory. Farmers complain that despite the promise of improvement each year, nothing changes at the ground level. It is the same old story of lack of resting places for farmers and other basic facilities like toilets and drinking water. During the last paddy season, produce worth lakhs of rupees was damaged by rains at the procurement time. At Pakhowal, labourers were busy removing wild growth from the vacant plots where the mandi is supposed to come up in a few days. Farmers of this block have been crying over the past many years for a pucca mandi, but to no avail. This year, too, they will be forced to bring their produce here, at the rain gods’ mercy. Farmer Sucha Singh says they lose a part of their produce in the absence of paved floors every year. Dirt gets mixed in the otherwise clean paddy, as a result of which the grains are labelled ‘poor quality’. No amount of cleaning helps and they have to let the winnowers take what is left after the crop is sold. "And god help us if it rains;" whole heaps have to be dried and yet the grain becomes black because of the moisture. The situation is only marginally better in pucca sheds. Farmers at Jagraon point out that valuable produce was lost during the last season as rainwater flowed into the sheds due to the low plinth level. Mr Mohan Singh, a farmer, said he was taking adequate measures to protect his paddy from rain in view of overcast skies. Last year water up to knee level had has spoiled his lot. He said, "We may cover the heaps with tarpaulin sheets in case of rain, but the sheets can’t do much when the entire mandi floor is inundated with water." Farmers complain that they are also often duped by winnowing women. There is no system to keep anti-social elements out of the mandis. Keeping a 24-hour vigil over their heaps for a few days at a stretch is tough. The commission agents have their own tale. Staggered payments by private buyers—sheller owners—are their problem. The farmer is not willing to wait for two months for the payments to materialise and wants his due upfront, which disrupts the financial circle of the commission agents. Says Mr Surinder Singh, a commission agent, official procurement will begin only after October 1, but the farmers have been bringing their produce for the past 10 days. We have to auction it to private parties and, understandably, they are paying less than the MSP announced. The farmer is not willing to wait till then and is suffering for early sowing of paddy. "This is a problem that cannot be redressed by us and only the farmers themselves or the government can solve it," he points out. The delay in the lifting of paddy by procurement agencies is due to other reasons as well. The lifting operation is auctioned and the contractors do not have the number of vehicles at their disposal that they claim they have at the time of submitting their bids. If physical verification of the vehicles of the bidder is done, it can go a long way in resolving the problem. The delay in lifting affects their payments as the agencies pay only after the stocks reach their yards. Influential commission agents pay the contractor to get their stock lifted on priority. The agents have appealed to the
government to keep a strict watch on the activities of the procurement
staff to check corruption so that the procurement goes on without a
hitch and the farmers are not put to any inconvenience. |
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PROCUREMENT PAINS
Mr Paramjit Singh Aujla, Director, Food and Supplies, a government department that plays the role of a nodal agency for the procurement of paddy, says that the government should come out with a staggered system of paddy pricing (minimum support price, MSP). It should be increase on a weekly basis. For instance, those who bring the paddy in the first week of October should be given the MSP as the floor rate. In the second week, there should an increase of Rs 5 per quintal. This would ensure the arrival of fully ripened as well as moisture-free paddy. Because of mechanised harvesting, paddy starts arriving in bulk in the second week of October, thus causing a glut and procurement and lifting challenges. A staggered price system would also result in staggered arrivals of paddy, making management easier. Low-grade rice Other experts say that the problem of paddy is multi-pronged. In fact, there is a need to look beyond production and marketing to overcome the various problems associated with paddy. For instance, a few years ago, the Delhi Government refused to lift Punjab rice for the Public Distribution System (PDS). The reason: poor quality. Similarly, several southern states, especially Andhra Pradesh, have also rejected rice consignments from Punjab in recent years, citing the same reason, though trade politics was also involved in Andhra Pradesh’s decision. For years, no major effort has been made to improve the quality of rice in Punjab, which produces low-grade rice, meant, by and large, for the consumption of poor sections and the lower middle class. The state lacks in the ability to produce aromatic basmati varieties that fetch high prices in the national as well as the international market. Linked to this low-quality rice are mass production of paddy and the murky trade of rice in the state. In 1960-61, only 2.27 lakh hectares of land was under paddy, but it was up to 26 lakh hectares in 2000-01. Since 1998-99, the average of area under paddy has remained around 25 lakh hectares. Less than 10 per cent of the area is under the superfine or aromatic varieties. Fake basmati Spurious basmati, which is popularly called DV (for ‘duplicate variety’), is sown in certain pockets of Punjab and a large part of Haryana. Even farmers from Punjab dispose of these varieties in neighbouring Haryana markets, where these are readily purchased. Though these varieties look like top-grade aromatic basmati varieties, when cooked they do not have the fragrance. Unscrupulous rice traders use these varieties to mix with high-grade basmati for profiteering. Mixed basmati from certain parts of Haryana commands a good market among middle-class consumers, not only in Punjab and Delhi but also in the southern and eastern states. In 90 per cent of the area under paddy, the varieties grown are low-grade, for which MSP is available. All these years, the focus in Punjab has remained on increasing the output, whether it was paddy, kinnow, grapes or even wheat, and not quality. Though earlier mass production of foodgrains was a national necessity, it is no more so. The Director Research at PAU, Dr G.S. Nanda, says the university is making all-out efforts to provide superfine varieties of basmati for commercial farming. It has already given the varieties 370, 386 and a superfine basmati to farmers in the recent years. These are aromatic basmati varieties with a long and sleek grain. Two or three more varieties are in the pipeline, which would be released in a year or two. Till now, the field performance of the variety 370 has been excellent, he says. Mr Harbans Singh Rosha, president of the Commission Agents Association of Khanna Mandi, says it is very difficult to sell Punjab’s rice in the open market. It fetches prices varying from Rs 850 to Rs 900, whereas the government purchases the same rice for Rs 1,024 under the levy quota for the PDS. Under the levy quota, the FCI lifts 75 per cent of the rice that is milled from the paddy purchased by rice millers and traders. MSP-driven quality Mr Tarsem Saini, president of the Punjab Rice Millers Association, says that farmers are not going in for basmati because the government has not been offering a good MSP for it. Moreover, bulk production of basmati leads to a fall in its price in the national market. Farmers are not ready to take such a risk. He demands that the Union Government should fix a price for producing good-quality paddy and not the low-grade paddy. In the international market, rice of the quality grown in Punjab is available for Rs 800 per quintal. Mr Saini says that private traders and rice millers are ready to buy most of the paddy that arrives in the market if assured that the entire rice produced would be accepted under the levy quota. The government would save about Rs 400 crore by doing so. The rice that is got prepared by it through custom milling costs about Rs 1,035 per quintal, instead of the levy rice priced at Rs 1,024 per quintal. But government procurement agencies have their own agenda regarding procurement because "big money" is involved in this trade, he alleges. Unscrupulous traders On the other hand, a section of the rice millers has also caused a great setback to the acceptability of Punjab’s rice in the national market. These millers mix "tota" (broken rice grains) in the levy rice. Official agencies also allegedly connive with these rice millers in this practice. When such rice goes to other states, there is a loss of reputation regarding the quality of rice from Punjab. Two years ago, the Bathinda police exposed a big scandal of re-cycling of rice bought at a lower rate from one of the government agencies for export. The police found that the rice was never exported, but resold at a higher price in the national market. If the Punjab Government had further investigated the scandal, it would have helped cleanse the rice trade in the state. Being complacent about the unethical elements in the trade sullies the state’s reputation in the national market of foodgrains. Last year proved lucky for Punjab
because of the drought in the country. Most of the rice stock that was
lying in the state has been exhausted because of the high demand from
drought-hit states. This year the story may be vastly different. |
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EVERY
paddy season, the Punjab Government conducts an extensive exercise to
ensure smooth procurement. Paddy starts arriving in mandis in the last
week of September. However, the official procurement usually begins on
October 1. Farmers have had a good run for the past three years, as in
not facing any major problem in disposing of their produce. However,
owing to high-level of moisture and delay in the withdrawal of monsoon
from this region, they may face problems this time around.