Farmers at mercy of ‘middlemen’

Arteev Sharma
Tribune News Service
Jammu, May 18

Even as the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre has promised to double the income of farmers, the farming community in the Jammu region is forced to sell their produce to “middlemen and millers” at the prices lower than the minimum support price (MSP) due to the non-availability of proper procurement facilities.

The agriculture department, while passing the buck, said it was the “mandate” of the Food Corporation of India (FCI) to procure produce, including wheat, from farmers and it had “very limited” role to play in this regard.

This grave problem has come to the fore after the harvesting of the rabi crop (wheat) in the Jammu region, particularly the plains — Jammu, Samba and Kathua districts — where farmers are being forced to sell their produce either to local traders, who act as middlemen, or millers at lower rates than the MSP, thereby raising a question mark on the FCI. The government has fixed Rs 1,840 per quintal as the MSP for wheat.

“There is no facility of procurement in our village and we are compelled to sell our produce to a local trader at the rate of Rs 1,670 to Rs 1,700 per quintal. Our livelihood is solely dependent on the agricultural produce and the non-availability of a procurement centre leads to a loss,” said Dhani Ram, a farmer in Panderi village in Jindrah panchayat of Dansal block.

Similar concern was flagged by another farmer, Darshan Kumar of Dhan panchayat in the block, who said, “the authorities never bothered to provide better procurement facilities to farmers who, in majority, are at the mercy of middlemen, millers and businessmen as there is no timely intervention from them. The procurement rate is generally fixed by mill owners as it (government) has failed to create a procurement system”.

Darshan said, “the nexus created by mill owners and middlemen, who directly buy from farmers, has not allowed a proper system to emerge. We are ready to sell our produce at the FCI-established centres at a longer distance but who will compensate us for the high transport charges”.

Pawan Singh Rathore, Director, Agriculture, Jammu, said the procurement was the mandate of the FCI. “We have been informed that nine of the total proposed 19 centres are for Jammu, Samba and Kathua districts. We took up the matter with them for establishing more collection centres in the region,” he said.

When contacted, Ravi Shastri, Area Manager, FCI, Jammu, said they had created nine nandis at strategically locations in wheat-producing areas of the Jammu plains to collect farmers’ produce. “We don’t have such a large infrastructure where we can provide procurement facility at the doorsteps of farmers,” he said.

Only 25% irrigated area 

• Jammu has 2.48 lakh hectares of agricultural land on which rabi crops are sown
• It has only 25 per cent irrigated area, the remaining chunk of the land is non-irrigated
• In response to an RTI application last year, the agriculture department had even admitted that the MSP was lower than the production cost of the wheat crop
• “In 2014-15, the MSP of wheat was Rs 1,450 per quintal, while the production cost was  Rs 2,735 per quintal. Similarly, the MSP of wheat in 2016-17 was Rs 1,625 per quintal against its production cost of Rs 1,630.27 per quintal,” the RTI reply said