Cold storages are facing an alarming situation in the State. Cold storage promoters of Odisha have sent a Save Our Souls (SOS) message to the State Government. The Odisha Cold Storage Association (OCSA) has sent the SOS to the State Government requesting to help out the sector as most of the cold storages in dire straits due to acute financial conditions as there is negative return in potato storing and trading business.
The OSCA has presented a memorandum to Agriculture Production Commissioner (APC) Gagan Kumar Dhal and Principal Secretary Agriculture Saurabh Garg during a recent meeting at the Tomato Onion Potato (TOP) Expo Summit, where the issues were discussed threadbare.
The OCSA has detailed out reasons for failure of cold storage operation, which include non availability of quality and quantity of potatoes, quality potato seeds, absence of buyback arrangements, farmers facing price volatility, absence of commodity finance and high cost debt. There is a severe lack for availability of quality potatoes locally; therefore cold storages in the State have to procure potatoes from West Bengal. In this scenario, West Bengal traders dictate terms in such procurement, knowing well that Odisha has no choice other than procuring potato from them. They also dodge in quality and quantity.
“After storing the potatoes in cold storages, spending huge sum in electricity and operational expenses, when we sell the same, we have to face fierce and vicious competition from West Bengal cold storages,” said OCSA in its memorandum.
Potato growers in Odisha are not provided with quality seeds at an affordable price. Cold storages promoters have neither any control over their catchment areas, nor any direct linkages with the farmers, for which quality produce is not available and productions are extremely low. The farmers are not getting any assurance of their buyback of their products, for which their interest in cultivation is dying down.
Secondly the farmers, who store their produce in cold storages are vulnerable to price volatility and have to incur high storage cost as they are not provided storage subsidy, which would encourage them to grow and store potatoes in the cold storages. And farmers are bound to sell their harvest immediately without looking for the right opportunity to sell their harvest by storing in cold storages as lack of adequate capital in hand for funding their next crop.
For cold storages there should be interest subvention facility at least of 10 per cent on term loan utilised for construction of cold storages under Odisha State Potato Mission, said OCSA. As electricity is a major input cost for the cold storages operation, at least 50 per cent electricity subsidy may be allowed to all cold storages. Similarly, electricity duty should be brought down to 2 per cent, said OCSA in its memorandum.