When drought and crop loss have hit the farmers in Odisha very hard, they are in for a double whammy with widespread distress selling of paddy being reported from the market yards across the State.
Farmers at the Government-controlled market yards in Bhanjanagar, Mukhiguda and Korakunda (Malkangiri) selling their paddy at below Minimum Support Price (MSP) has come to fore, when the Government-sponsored procurement season of 2015 -16 is on with much fanfare.
Significantly, when the procurement session has commenced since December 2015 in State, official data with the Food and Civil Supplies Department till January 5, 2016 reports not a single kg of paddy procured in most of the blocks in Ganjam and undivided Koraput districts. On the contrary, the Government market yards at blocks like Bhanjanagar in Ganjam and blocks of Korakunda and Mukhiguda in undivided Koraput district have till date reported arrival of over 2 Metric Tonnes (MT) and 180MT of paddy respectively till January 5 last. And, the shocker is farmers here have been selling their paddy at a whopping 15 per cent discount from that of the MSP of `1,410. However, the Government intervention is not visible, sources confided.
Sources at the market yards also reveal that farmers are bearing a loss of over `200/quintal owing to this distress sale of paddy. What is nagging the farmer organisations most is, there are only 85 days left of the current procurement season and procurement is nil in these blocks till date. “The farm distress in Odisha could turn explosive in days to come and it is feared that this Kharif season could end worse than 2013 - 14 procurement season when distress sale was the worst ever in recent times,” warned Akhsay Kumar of the Odisha Navnirman Krushak Sangh.
Reports from Western Odisha also indicate distress selling in districts bordering Chhattisgarh, as traders from there procure paddy at cost below MSP by paying cash at sale point to distressed farmers in need of immediate cash for consumption or health reasons.
According to cost estimation of OUAT experts, a farmer in Odisha spent around `1,360 to produce a quintal of paddy this Kharif season. And, the MSP of `1,410 provides a margin of mere `50 over that of estimated cost. But as the produce is being traded at around 15 per cent below the MSP, the farmers there would not be able to recover even their input cost. Such a scenario then would push the farmers to distress suicides, remarked a senior OUAT official.
Importantly, when Odisha joined the Decentralised Procurement Scheme (DCP) around half-a-decade back, the objective was to ensure MSP coverage to maximum farmers. But the State on average could procure only around 40 per cent of total paddy produced during 2013 - 15 against around 50 per cent during 2011 - 13. In contrast, the average procurement rate in neighbouring Chhattisgarh is around 60 per cent and over 70 per cent in Punjab and Haryana, revealed an analysis. This clearly indicates that the MSP outreach in Odisha is quite limited comparably.