Bumper Potato Crop in West Bengal sends potato prices crashing

A bumper crop, government apathy and exploitation by middlemen has driven a debt-ridden potato farmer to commit suicide in North Bengal’s Jalpaiguri district this week. Many, however, are not ready to give in without a fight although the odds are against them. Farmers from Burdwan and Hoogly districts in south Bengal demonstrated at a number of places by destroying their crop. The steps taken by the state government to help the community have also proved to be inadequate. According to state agriculture minister Naren De, this year the total production of potato has been over 9.5 million tonnes — much above the average annual yield of 8-8.5 million tonnes. “The state has only 375 cold storages with a total capacity of 4 million tonnes, thus there is a glut in the market and a good amount of potato has still not been harvested and rotting in the fields.” Finance minister Ashim Dasgupta in his budget speech said, “This year, we have seen a fall in the prices of potato due to excessive production. As a consequence, the potato growers have suffered loss. The state government has decided that in order to protect the interest of potato growers, potato will be purchased through cooperatives and the West Bengal Essential Commodities Supplies Corporation (WBECSC) at a price of Rs 3.50 per kilogram and stocked in cold storages.” Naren De said the state government has decided to buy one million tonnes of potato from the farmers. Although various cooperative societies have started buying potato in Hoogly and Burdwan — the two major potato-growing districts — so far the state’s intervention has yielded little positive result.