Trouble for farmers far from over

RAJKOT: It has been over a month now and Nathalal Mavji, a farmer of Mityana village in Tankara taluka of Morbi district, is still awaiting payment of 2,860 kg groundnut that he had sold to a government agency at minimum support price (MSP) of Rs 900 per 20kg. And he is not the only one facing this problem. Number of groundnut farmers in

Saurashtra

, who sold their produce to government agencies at MSP, are yet to receive the payment in their bank accounts.

The ground reality for groundnut farmers of Gujarat is that their troubles are far from over.

The crisis has multiplied with hoarding of groundnut by traders and middlemen who had procured it at prices lower than the MSP and selling the same at MSP to government agencies.

While the traders are queuing up to sell the groundnut, many small and medium farmers are facing problems allegedly because of lengthy procedure and non-cooperation at government procuring centres.

Chairman of Amreli Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Dipak Malani said, “The people who have queued up to sell groundnut at MSP are people who have not done farming for a single day. They have just purchased from farmers and are now selling it to government at MSP.”

Chairman

V R Patel

of National Agricultural Co-operative Marketing Federation (NAFED), the central agency to procure groundnut at MSP, admitted this fact and said, “We have noticed some disparity in token and sometimes we sense that the seller is not a real farmer. But they have complete documents what can we do?”

This year the groundnut production is at record high with Indian Oilseed and Produce Export Promotion Council (IOPEPC) estimating it at 32 lakh tonne. The government has procured 6.77 lakh tonne groundnut at MSP till date.

A farmer

Ranmanbhai Vedalbhai

of Hariavadar village of Kalyanpur taluka in DevBhumi Dwarka district said, “We have 80 villages in Kalyanpur, but there is only one procurement centre that is Bhatiya village in Jamnagar. I have 8,000 kg groundnut in my farm. Our turn comes after 45 days of registration at the procurement centre and the payment gets released only after three months.”

Farmers also complained that the government has closed procurement centres after election. A famer Popat Lavjibhai of Mityana village in Morbi said, “Soon after election, Tankara centre was closed for procurement. Now, only two centers in Morbi district are operational.”

Meanwhile, former agriculture minister and chairman of Gujarat State Co-Operative Marketing Federation Limited (GUJCOMASOL) Dilip Sanghani blamed the government’s interference and mismanagement behind the crisis. “This year government asked NAFED to assign the maximum procurement work to Gujarat State Co-Operative Cotton Federation Limited (GUJCOT), which does not have ground resources. We have all the resources to procure the groundnut at village level,” Sanghani told TOI.

NAFED chairman V R Patel, too, supported Sangahni’s view. “State government interferes in agency distribution for procurement and because of that only 20% of procurement was assigned to GUCOMASOL.”