Plentiful paddy spells doom for state farmers

KOLKATA: West Bengal faces a “crisis of plenty� with prospects of yet another bumper crop of paddy and vegetables causing a nightmare for farmers, already reeling under low prices and loss of the Bangladesh market. Bangladesh, too, is expected to have a bumper paddy crop this year. Faulty planning and administration have led to the substantial loss of stored vegetables while low prices have benefited middlemen without reaching the consumer.
The state government’s own Bureau of Applied Economics and Statistics has now confirmed the trend and raised an alarm over the increasing number of farmers refusing to cultivate paddy, preferring to leave their land fallow.This was also borne out by the state government’s failure to procure even onethird of the target fixed for last season.
The bureau’s latest report quoted a sample survey by the Burdwan district committee of the Kisan Sabha, a wing of the ruling CPM. The survey was done in a village of Raina II block where more than 100 bighas of land, irrigated by diesel pumps, were left fallow. “Given the combination of rise in diesel prices, fall in paddy prices and the lack of information on crop substitution, cultivators decided that it was not worthwhile to plant anything on the land,� it stated.
“The net income from cultivation was either negligible or negative. In fact, the losses were to the tune of Rs 700 per acre,� the survey added. In fact, if sold at the harvest price, profits from the cultivation of high-yielding varieties hardly exceeded the income from the cultivation of traditional varieties, said the report. It maintained that though the harvest price of the aus crop had increased nominally this season, it was still way below the prices of 1997-98.
Incidentally, the price of aman crop has declined this year while both are below the minimum support price of Rs 530 per quintal. The situation is rather alarming in the ‘rice bowl’ of the state, from Howrah to East Midnapore districts. The new state agri-business policy, shaped in collaboration with global consultant McKinsey & Co., focused on increasing agro-productivity and production of export quality aromatic rice. But declining prices hardly offer any economic incentive to the farmers, admitted state agriculture officials. This may affect the public distribution system as the bulk of rice for the PDS is procured from these districts, including Burdwan.