Helping farmers store surplus crops

Trade and commerce in this country remain as tricky as ever to take both the growers of crops of mass consumption and the consumers for a ride. Big businesses wield their all-pervasive power compelling farmers and the consumers to see both sides of the same coin within a year or the following year depending on the cropping pattern or yield. There is no guarantee that small farmers will ever reap benefit from crops such as paddy, potato and onion enjoying wider consumption than any other items. The theory of demand-supply is conveniently distorted by a syndicated nexus of businesses, hoarders and middlemen. Right now farmers are facing the dual problems of no space in cold storages for their excess yield and the throwaway prices. That is exactly how the big businesses make their stocks of rice, potato and onion for fleecing the consumers in the lean season while the growers in time of high yield have to dispose of their crops at prices below their production costs.

The agriculture department has done enough to encourage farmers to raise production of crops, vegetables and even fish several times more but no government has felt the need to develop the allied sub-sectors so crucial for building a reserve for the off-season and stabilising prices throughout the year. Warehouses and cold storages are mostly controlled by private parties. If a reasonable number of those were constructed and run under the government management to strike a balance between demand and supply during the crunch time, private business entities could not monopolise the market. The cat-and-mouse game played to maximise profits from certain targeted item each year would be a thing of the past. That the government effort to build a stock of the surplus cereal suffers almost every year is almost axiomatic. This is done in collusion with big businesses for monetary gains. Thus paddy and rice procurement drives end in failures.

Evidently, this indicates that government must have an adequate number of warehouses and cold storages not only to meet the crisis during the lean period before the next harvest but also because of averting the losses due to a lack of modern storage facilities. After all, onion and potato are perishable items that cannot be preserved anywhere to prevent rot. If these items are stored in technologically advanced warehouses and cold storages, the government can as well make some profit in addition to meeting the national need in time of crisis. So, the government would do well to build up a chain of such storage facilities preferably in the regions where such crops have surplus yields.

The bottom line is to help the agriculture department with its planning for coverage of acreage for different crops in this land-scarce country. When the government maintains some control of the supply line of the locally produced items in particular, the business syndicates' market manipulation can be foiled. Increased storage facilities can in the process avoid rotting of items like onion which is more or less grown as much as the country needs but for the early losses due to a lack of scientific harvest and storage. Thus a chain of modern storage facilities can make a difference in the supply line as well as in the unpredictable market volatility.