Farmers dump basmati produce on Amritsar city roads to protest low price

Anguished over the abysmally low prices being offered to them for basmati, the farmers here scattered the crop on city roads on Saturday and demanded that the government ensure a fair price. The farmers started their protest by scattering the basmati outside the office of the Deputy Commissioner.

Later, their cavalcade of tractor-trolleys moved through various roads in the city and scattered the produce on the road. The sight of farmers throwing the basmati crop, which customers buy for at least Rs 150 per kg, left city residents shocked.

A farmer, Joginder Singh, said, “We are being forced to sell basmati for Rs 2,200 per quintal which is even lower than the minimum support price (MSP) of parmal varieties.” He said that even as they are being forced to sell their crop for Rs 22 per kg, the consumers would still be forced to buy it at an exorbitant price.

The average price of 1509 variety of basmati in the local market presently is between Rs 2,000 to Rs 2,400 per quintal. Farmers stated that last year, they had got a price ranging between Rs 3,500 to Rs 4,000 per quintal.

The government has fixed an MSP of Rs 2,300 for common grade parmal varieties and Rs 2,320 for Grade A varieties. The farmers stated that 68 kg of rice is produced from 100 kg of paddy. “We are not so rich that we can throw our produce on roads. But we want people to know that farmers producing food for them are not being paid enough,” said Sarwan Singh Pandher, Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Committee (KMSC) general secretary who led the protest.

The area under basmati cultivation increased significantly this year as a result of an intensive government campaign which asked farmers to go for it because of its export value. According to the Agriculture Department, the crop has been sown on nearly 1.46 lakh hectares in the district. In comparison, the area under cultivation of parmal varieties has gone down to merely 40,000 hectares.