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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | 'Let them sell pakodas': Maharashtra farmers do not benefit from growing even high-priced tur now -Manas Roshan

'Let them sell pakodas': Maharashtra farmers do not benefit from growing even high-priced tur now -Manas Roshan

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published Published on Jun 24, 2017   modified Modified on Jun 24, 2017
-Scroll.in

The minimum support price of Rs 5,050 per quintal barely covers the input cost, yet the going market rate is just about Rs. 4,500.

Sudhakar Patil, 65, is a farmer in Bhayar Chincholi village in Maharashtra’s Osmanabad district. He cultivates a mix of tur, urad and moong on his 11-acre farm in the kharif season and chana and wheat in winter. In a good year, when there’s water in the wells, he can plant some sugarcane as well. “Tur and sugarcane take a long time to grow but fetch good prices, so when a farmer sows these, it is because these are cash crops,” he explains. “They pay for children’s school fees, a wedding in the family or medical expenses.”

To farmers such as Patel, the nearby Murum mandi is a lifeline: its demand for their crops determines whether their fortunes will rise or fall in any given season, and its prices are a weather vane for the vast international commodities market that lies beyond. Its 100-odd licenced traders purchase grain from nearly 50 villages in the area, forming an important link in the pulses economy of Marathwada. Along with Vidarbha, this region accounts for most of Maharashtra’s production of pulses.

Two consecutive years of drought had caused India’s tur production to drop by 23% to 26 lakh tonnes in 2015. The shortage led to sharp rise in the retail price of tur dal, which at the end of that year was Rs 150-Rs 170, a record high. The farmers’ returns, too, rose as prices in the mandis doubled to Rs 10,000 per quintal ( or Rs 100 per kg). Some farmers got up to Rs 13,000 per quintal. Patil had no tur to sell that season because his crop had wilted on his parched field. In 2016, encouraged by high prices and a good monsoon forecast, a large number of farmers across Maharashtra, including Patil, sowed tur on previously sugarcane and cotton fields.

As a result, the state’s tur production rose over four times to 20 lakh tonnes, nearly half the country’s total output. The glut, however, knocked down prices to under Rs 4,500 per quintal in the mandis. This is lower than even the minimum support price, the rate at which the government is meant to procure produce from farmers to cushion market shocks.

With the farmers’ distress growing, the central government stepped in at the start of 2017, deciding to buy tur at the minimum support price through the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India and other agencies. At least 120 procurement centres were set up in Maharashtra alone, but they were not nearly enough for the sheer amount of produce flooding the market. The Murum mandi, for example, deals with about 50,000 farmers but it has just one procurement centre.

Patil waited, watching the prices, through the New Year. He finally went to sell his tur at the minimum support price in February but had to wait two months for his turn. “At first, the official said I didn’t have the right documents [land deeds and Aadhaar],” he explained the delay. “I came back another day and they didn’t have gunny bags to stock the grain.” After the tur was finally weighed, Patil had to wait another month for the payment to be credited into his bank account. Farmers across the state’s tur-growing areas narrated similar experiences as Patil’s.

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Scroll.in, 23 June, 2017, https://scroll.in/article/841196/let-them-sell-pakodas-maharashtra-farmers-do-not-benefit-from-growing-even-high-priced-tur-now


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