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25 Mar 2013
Growers frustrated with sliding potato price

The low price of potato has caused frustration among the growers in the pick season of harvest of the crop.
Expressing unhappiness small and marginal growers told New Age that they had forced to sell potato in lower prices as they needed money immediately for the cultivation of next crops.
Traders and a very small number of affluent farmers would gain benefit as they can afford to stock the item in cold storage.
According to the farmers, the potato is now selling at Tk 300-Tk 330 per maund on the wholesale market, decreasing by Tk 120-Tk 150 a maund in a month.
The item is now retailing at Tk 12 to Tk 14 a kg with the price decreasing by 24 per cent in a month and decreasing by 18.52 per cent in a year, according to the data of the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh, released on March 24.
An official of the Department of Agricultural Extension said this year they had targeted potato cultivation on 4.5 lakh hectares of land with a production target of 85.95 lakh tonnes. But the farmers brought more land under potato cultivation than the target.
So far 40 per cent of the crop has already been harvested, he said adding that this year the production of potato would likely to cross the target due to increasing acreage and bumper yield.
According to the DAE data, potato production was 87 lakh tonnes in the last 2011-12 season.
Md Ayub Ali, a farmer at Shologhar under Srinagar upazila in Munshiganj, said the price of potato was reasonable at the beginning of the harvesting season but in the middle of the harvesting the price had decreased.
The recent fall of potato price has disappointed the growers as the higher price of fertiliser and increasing irrigation cost had fuelled the overall production cost this year, he said.
Ayub said the traders who were buying in low price would gain profit as they will stock the item and will sell them later at higher price.
He said that the growers were not getting the available cold storage facilities as the space of the most of the stores usually booked by the big traders.
Demanding loan with low interest for the growers he said, ‘If the government does not come forward to establish cold storage for the benefit of farmers’, the growers would not get
the fair price of their products.’
‘I am frustrated over the low price of potato as the production cost was higher this year than the previous year’, said Md Ripon, a farmer from Munshiganj.
He said he had produced 20 tonnes of potato from around 1.4 acres of land and now feared of loss as the price had fallen.
Ripon said he had already spent Tk 1.6 lakh for the production but the price of the crop stood at only Tk 1.65 lakh. ‘I have no alternative to sell the product in low price as I have to manage fund for the cultivation of the next crop’, he said.
Md Mobarak Ali Dulu, a small farmer from Jat Halida at Gabtali in Bogra, said he had produced four tonnes of potato from 66 decimals of land by spending Tk 30 thousand this year but he forced to sell the crop at Tk 32 thousand.
He said it was unfortunate that this year the price of potato was lower than the previous year.
Bangladesh Cold Storage Association president Md Jasim Uddin said they had storage capacity of around 50 lakh tonnes of potato and already more than 60 per cent space had been filed up.
He expects that the remaining 40 per cent will be filled up shortly and no space crisis will take place this year as a few numbers of new cold storage have started their operations.

Source :: New Age