Jalandhar farmers rue slow paddy procurement, lifting

Farmers, arriving in the ditrict’s mandis with their produce, are distressed due to the delay in lifting and the slow procurement of their crop.

Baldev Singh, a farmer from Nandanpur village, said he was a heart patient. He said the doctor had advised him to take rest and to go to the grain market. “It gets suffocating here. But, I have no other option because there is no one to take care of my produce that has been lying in the mandi for the last five days as the moisture content in the crop is not going down to 17,” he said.

Because of the space crunch in the mandis, the produce can be seen lying outside the mandi yards. Vehcles pass by the crop, while trying not to go over it.

Sukhpreet Singh, a farmer from Rasulpur village, who has kept his produce in a tractor-trailers for the last four days said, “I have to unload the paddy in the mandi and spread it otherwise the grains will get damaged,” adding that “Things are very bad here. We don’t know what to do to sell our crop.”

Farmers said both the Centre and the state governments had failed to address their issues. Non-procurement of produce and slow lifting had led to a severe space crunch in the mandis, besides delaying harvesting of the ripened crop, they said.

Farmers feared that any further delay in procurement of the crop might reduce moisture content and the weight of grains.

Subegh Singh, a farmer, said he felt stuck like every other farmer in the mandi. It seemed there was no way out of this maze of slow procurement and lifting of the crop, he said.