Farmers make beeline before cold storages as potato prices crash in Uttar Pradesh

Potato prices have crashed in Uttar Pradesh amid a bumper crop as cold storages being packed to capacity and farmers being turned away, who, with their tractors laden with potatoes, have been making a beeline before the storage houses.

The farmers in UP, which accounts for 35 per cent of the total potato production in the country, find themselves in a tough situation as they are unable to store their produce in the cold storages in the state.

''I was told that there was no room in the cold storage......I don't know what to do with the crop....temperatures are already rising...my produce will rot if I am not able to put it in the cold storage immediately,'' said a potato farmer in UP's Sitapur district.

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District officials admitted that there indeed was a shortage of space in the cold storages. ''The state witnessed a bumper potato crop this year.....the supply is much more than the demand and so the farmers want to keep their produce in the cold storages...we are trying to increase the storage capacity,'' said a district official in Sitapur on Monday.

Farmers said that the potato was being sold in the mandis at Rs 300-400 per quintal whereas last year it had sold at Rs 1000 per quintal. ''We can not recover the cost,'' said another farmer.

Farmers from the main potato-growing districts of Farrukhabad, Hathras, Sitapur and some others were especially facing a lot of problems in trying to preserve their produce.

An official of the district agriculture department said that potato cultivation has substantially increased this year, which has led to a glut. The state government had declared that it would purchase potatoes at Rs 650 per quintal but the farmers said that it is well below the cost of production.

The issue acquired political overtones after the Samajwadi Party (SP) sought to paint the BJP government as 'anti-farmer'. ''Abki baar aloo badal dega sarkar'' (Potato will change the government), SP president Akhilesh Yadav said in a Twitter post.