Indian Government to procure 6,600 tones of potatoes from farmers

The State Government has announced its decision to procure 6,600 tonnes of potatoes at `6 a kg from farmers.

The decision was announced by Cooperation Minister Damodar Rout after a meeting of three ministers as directed by Speaker Niranjan Pujari.

“The Government has decided to procure 6,600 tonnes of potatoes through its own agency. The farmers will be paid minimum support price of `6 per kg as announced earlier,” Rout said, according to newindianexpress.com.

The meeting, presided over by Rout, was attended by Agriculture Minister Pradip Maharathy and Minister of State for Food Supply and Consumer Welfare Sanjay Dasburma. Earlier, MLAs cutting across party lines expressed concern in the Assembly over the plight of potato growers for the second day on Tuesday.

Blaming National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (Nafed) for the mismanagement in procurement of potato from farmers in the State, Rout said, “Nafed was assigned the job of potato procurement from 22 districts. However, it withdrew from the assignment on March 18 leading to chaos.”

While Markfed will procure 2,000 tonnes of potato from Bargarh and store them at the State’s cold storage at Jagatpur, 2,500 tonnes of potato from Jharsuguda will be stored at a cold storage at Patia in Bhubaneswar. Besides, 1,000 tonnes of potato procured from Balasore will be stored in the district.

Admitting that the State faced shortage of cold storage facilities to store potato, Rout said Udyan Fresh will use its own facilities for storing. He said Markfed has not received a single rupee from the Government towards procurement of potato.

The Assembly witnessed uproarious scenes during zero hour with Opposition members rushing to the Well of the House demanding a statement from Government on the issue. The Speaker had to adjourn the House twice when members continued to be in the Well shouting slogans.