JAGATSINGHPUR: Green gram (moong) farmers of Jagatsinghpur district are forced to resort to distress sale despite bumper crop this year.Sources said the Agriculture department had opened five green gram procurement centres at regulated marketing committee in Jagatsinghpur, Chapda in Raghunathpur and Ichhapur under Balikuda block and others in primary cooperative society at Gopinathpur in Biridi and Sailo of Kujang block.
However, no such centres were opened in Tirtol, Erasama and Naugaon blocks leading to resentment among farmers. The farmers, owing to non-supply of subsidised seeds at block level, had to procure green and black gram seeds from the local market. Green gram was cultivated on 42,980 hectares of land and Agriculture department had targeted to procure about 1.80 lakh quintals of legume from the district’s farmers. It was decided that procurement process will start from the first week of May and will continue till July 3. But, the procurement process started 15 days behind schedule and has already ended.
The reasons attributed to ending the procurement process 21 days earlier are shortage of bags supplied by National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Limited (NAFED), lack of storage facilities, delay in opening of the centres and negligent attitude of Agriculture department and NAFED officials.
Odisha State Cooperative Marketing Federation (Markfed) had procured the legume from the farmers through RMC and cooperative society at minimum support price (MSP) of `5,575 as announced by the Government. But the procured green gram could not be packed as NAFED stopped supplying bags for the purpose. Similarly, there is no sufficient space in local warehouses to stock the procured moong as a result of which surplus stock was sent to Sakhigopal.
Meanwhile, hundreds of irate farmers blocked Cuttack-Naugaon National Highway 55 at Jagatsinghpur protesting non-procurement of their produce on Thursday.Assistant District Agriculture Officer Nilamani Das said procurement of green gram was stopped due to lack of storage facilities in local warehouses. He said NAFED till date has procured only 6,200 quintals of legume.