VIJAYAWADA: Middlemen have emerged as the biggest beneficiaries of the ongoing paddy procurement process, with farmers alleging systematic exploitation through informal arrangements.
With procurement virtually paralysed at the village level, intermediaries are directly approaching farmers and lifting paddy stocks. Even when the produce is later routed through government procurement and the full Minimum Support Price (MSP) is credited to farmers’ bank accounts, cultivators allege they are forced to return a portion of the amount to middlemen, exposing a deeper nexus that is draining farm incomes and undermining the procurement mechanism.
Farmers across the State say they are facing severe difficulties in selling their paddy, sharply contradicting government claims that procurement is progressing smoothly. The procurement centres are reportedly informing farmers that rice mills are not lifting stocks, effectively pushing cultivators towards private traders. This has resulted in widespread distress sales at prices well below the MSP, causing heavy financial losses.
This year, the situation has been further aggravated by the Montha cyclone and heavy rainfall, which damaged standing crops and harvested produce in several districts. Farmers said the rains led to grain discolouration and fungal infection, locally known as ‘mangu’, prompting middlemen and mills to either reject the produce outright or accept it only at very low prices citing quality norms.
Pothuboina Nagaraju, a farmer from Kanumuru village in Krishna district, said he suffered major losses after cultivating paddy on eight acres. “The Paddy Procurement Centre refused to procure our produce and asked us to approach middlemen, who are offering prices that do not even cover cultivation costs,” he said. As a tenant farmer, he must give 19 bags of 75 kg per acre to the landowner, while cyclone-hit yields were barely 20 bags per acre, leaving him with negligible returns, he added.
Another farmer, YSN Raju from Konkepudi, said he sold his entire produce to middlemen at Rs 1,500 per 75-kg bag, against an MSP of Rs 1,800. During the Montha cyclone, he said, a middleman arranged harvesting using machines and entered into a prior agreement to buy the paddy at the reduced price. “Though the full amount of about Rs 64,000 was later credited to my account during government procurement, I had to return nearly Rs 14,000 to the middleman and retain only Rs 50,000,” he alleged.
Adding to the distress, farmers said widely cultivated varieties such as BPT and other fine-grain paddy are also being routed to middlemen due to procurement delays. According to farmers, millers are purchasing these varieties at around Rs 1,400 per 77-kg bag, allegedly for hoarding purposes. After threshing and milling, the same rice is later sold in the open market at prices exceeding Rs 1,500 for just 25 kg, allowing intermediaries to reap huge margins while farmers incur losses.
It may be noted that the government has so far procured 15.39 lakh metric tonnes of paddy from 2.36 lakh farmers, paying Rs 3,649.63 crore this season, with the amount being credited into farmers’ accounts within 24 hours, sometimes within hours. However, farmers insist that cyclone damage, quality rejections and the growing dominance of middlemen have severely eroded their actual earnings, leaving them with heavy losses on the ground.