Vijay Uppal
The farming sector has been in the
news of late for all wrong reasons. In many areas in the country, the sector
has been reeling under a massive scarcity of water. Above all these, the
farmers across the country are not able to generate enough revenue out of their
produce.
The stunning facts are as follows:-
Vegetable/Fruits/Milk
|
Approx. price
(at which
farmer sells)
|
Approx. Price
(at which you
buy)
|
Potato
|
Rs. 4-8/- per kg.
|
Rs. 15-20/- per kg.
|
Tomato
|
Rs. 8-12/- per kg.
|
Rs. 25-35/- per kg.
|
Apple(H.P)
|
Rs. 30-40/- per kg.
|
Rs. 100-125/- per kg.
|
Capsicum
|
Rs. 15-20/- per kg.
|
Rs. 50-60/- per kg.
|
Milk
|
Rs. 18-25/- per ltr.
|
Rs. 40-45/- per ltr.
|
Shocked? But this is true.
A farmer who produces vegetables,
fruits, milk, etc. and toils in the field for hours in extreme weather
conditions is getting only ¼ or 1/5 of the price at which you are buying in
cities as a consumer.
Who is making the money
and why the farmers are being exploited?
It is the middle man / Aadhti who is
making the real money. The common farmer is unlike the AMUL scenario where
farmer co-operative societies are very well organized (thanks to the pioneering
efforts of Mr. Verghese Kurien). The farmers do not have the capacity to hold
the vegetables, fruits, milk stocks (because of the perishable nature of these
products) in order to fetch the right price. Whenever, the farmer sees that the
shelf life of his produce is getting over, he under prices his product and
sells it to the greedy middle man. This middle man is always on the look-out
for an opportunity to exploit the farmer during such a situation.
In fact, it has been seen that the
middle men create a cartel through which they buy the fruits and vegetables and
other farm produce at a very low price from the farmer.
What are the solutions?
The solutions (to this growing
disparity of income of the farmer) are as follows:-
1. Farmers producing same
variety of vegetable and fruits should form small groups / co-operatives of 50
to 100 farmers each in every region and collectively negotiate the fair price of
their farm produce with the middle man /
aadhti.
2. The institutional buying
can be directly linked to the farmers or farming community. e.g. in Delhi /
N.C.R the requirement of baby corn in 5 star / 3 star hotels is approx. 1000kgs
per day. The consumption can be met easily by a group of farmers sitting in
Uttarakhand. The only catch is that these farmers in Uttarakhand need to be
collectively represented by any of the NGOs or a transparent Marketing Agency.
This
type of a scheme, if introduced properly can eliminate the process of farmer
going through multiple middlemen and only one agency with reasonable margin can
take care of marketing the farm produce of farmers from Uttarakhand or Western
UP.
The
way to go forward is to encourage a group of farmers to produce high yield
value added vegetables and fruits like Olive, Yellow/red Capsicum, Cherry
tomato, Broccoli and Mushroom.
3. At a later stage, this
agency can install a mini food processing plant to semi process vegetables (at
the farms) like Baby corn, Yellow/red Capsicum, Cherry tomato, Broccoli and Mushroom
etc. Also, the farmers collectively can invest in refrigerated vans in order to
ensure smooth transportation of highly perishable products to far off places.
4. Another solution is that
with the Ayurveda products gaining in demand and brands like Patanjali becoming
household names, it makes sense to grow herbs, medicinal plants like Jatamasi, Neem,
Haldi, Tulsi, Gilohi, Aloevera etc. Also, the aromatic
plants can be grown whose market price is beyond the farmers’ expectations.
Yes,
people are noticing disparity in farmers’ income, but the way to go forward is
to explore and implement the above solutions in the right manner.
