Lakhimpur Kheri and Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh
At the Paliya Mandi in Lakhimpur Kheri, Uttar Pradesh, mounds of golden grain lie on the ground waiting to be weighed and procured by the government procurement centre. The centre has been open for business since October 1, but till October 13 not a single grain of rice was bought or sold.
Predictably, farmers are disgruntled and anxious. “I brought fifty quintals of paddy here and while it was to be weighed on October 12, nothing has happened,” Joginder Singh, a farmer from Naugawa village in Lakhimpur Kheri, told Gaon Connection.
Joginder, who has 4.5 acres (1.8 hectares) of land, said he had harvested paddy 20 days ago, dried it and brought it to the mandi, and he was still waiting for it to be procured.
Not just him, there were other farmers too with him who were waiting to sell it at the Minimum Support Price (MSP) at the government mandi. The kharif market season 2021-22 MSP for paddy was set at Rs 1,940 a quintal for the ordinary grade quality and Rs 1,960 for A grade (a quintal has 100 kilogrammes).
“I have to prepare my land to sow mustard and I have to go back and pay the farm labourers,” Joginder worried.
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The manager of the procurement centre outside which Joginder waited said there was a reason no paddy was weighed or bought yet. “We are not procuring anything yet because there is moisture in the grains,” Balend Kumar, manager, told Gaon Connection.
“There has been excessive rainfall this year and the moisture content in the paddy is a lot more than the allowed seventeen per cent,” he pointed out. “Moisture content is the first parameter that is checked before procuring the grain,” the manager added. The procurement centre will remain open till January 31, 2022.
Farmers forced to sell paddy at low rates
About 50 kilometres away from Paliya, the story is no different in Shahjahanpur.
“No one wants my grain. And nothing has happened at the government procurement centre set up near my village,” Malkit Singh, who has cultivated paddy in his five acres of land, told Gaon Connection.
The desperate farmer said he was left with no alternative than to sell his produce at a much lower price than MSP to private traders.
According to Malkit Singh, private traders who are willing to take the grain off him will do so only on a two month credit at Rs 1,200 a quintal. Or, if the farmer wants the money immediately, he will have to settle for Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,100 a quintal, he explained.
“The government procurement agency said the grain does not meet the required standard,” the hapless farmer said. He informed he had already loaded 50 quintals of paddy onto a trolley to take it to the procurement centre, and there was more from his five-acre farm.
Despite the government procurement centres officially opening shop from October 1 in Uttar Pradesh, farmers in Shahjahanpur and Lakhimpur Kheri complained that no procurement was done till October 13. Meanwhile, procurement of paddy has ‘officially’ begun in Hardoi, Bareilly, Moradabad, Meerut, Saharanpur and Aligarh.
The Uttar Pradesh government has set the target of procuring seven million metric tonnes of paddy, more than the previous year where 6.8 million metric tonnes were procured. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has repeatedly said that the farmers should not face any problems in selling their paddy and the transactions should be completely transparent.
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According to the website of the Food and Civil Supplies Department, 3436.4 metric tonnes of paddy had been procured from 733 farmers in Uttar Pradesh as of October 18, at the cost of Rs 66.7 million. There were a total of 255,560 farmers who had registered to sell to the government.
Procurement problems
“Paddy procurement has begun in the district. There were some issues that needed to be sorted out with the rice mill owners, that has been done,” Arvind Kumar Chaurasiya, district magistrate, Lakhimpur Kheri, told Gaon Connection on October 18.
“The farmers have been asked to bring the paddy directly to the mandis where it can be weighed,” he added.
However, according to farmers, procurement was not happening. Because many of the government procurement centres were not going about their job on time, mill owners and private traders were exploiting the situation, and forcing farmers to sell their produce at low prices, complained the farmers.
Countering the accusation, a trader on condition of anonymity told Gaon Connection, “There is so much moisture in the paddy. The farmers harvest the crop and directly load it onto their trolleys without drying it first. When it dries it reduces in weight considerably. Who will bear that extra cost? That is the reason we pay them a lower rate,” he said.
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In a farmers’ meet at Tikunia in Lakhimpur Kheri on October 12, Rakesh Tikait, national spokesperson for Bharatiya Kisan Union, a farmers’ union had accused the big mill owners and private traders of short changing the farmers and carrying away the cheaply bought paddy in truckloads to sell at MSP elsewhere to make huge profits. He added that it was the responsibility of the government to ensure the grain was procured at MSP.
Furnishing land records to sell produce in open market
Meanwhile, in Gola Mandi in Lakhimpur Kheri, farmer Mohammad Shamim waited with about 50 quintals of paddy to sell there. He had already sold about 200 quintals from his 60-acre farm, in the open market.
“The farmer needs the money and the government procurement is yet to gather steam,” the 60-year-old farmer told Gaon Connection. That was the reason he and other farmers were selling in the open market and to the mills directly, he said. But because of some disagreement with the mills where he had earlier sold to, he had come to the Gola mandi.
“If we want money upfront, mill owners and private traders will not pay more than nine hundred to eleven hundred rupees a quintal,” Shamim said. “If we agree to give the paddy to them on credit, they will pay us around twelve hundred a quintal, but after two months,” he explained.
“But we have to also furnish them with our land record papers and Aadhaar cards,” Shamim from Lakhimpur Kheri said.
Farmers allege that the same mill owners and private traders, using the land papers, etc., register at the government website and then sell the grain to the government at MSP thereby making a huge profit.
Pointing out the dire straits the paddy farmers were in, Dharmendra Malik, media-in-charge of the Bharatiya Kisan Union, told Gaon Connection, “On one hand the farmers are not getting the MSP for their produce. On the other hand, the private traders are demanding land record documents and Aadhaar details from them.”
Why does the private trader need these papers, Malik demanded to know. “It can only mean that using these documents the traders are selling the produce they buy from farmers at throwaway prices and then selling it at the government procurement centres at MSP thereby making a profit,” Malik alleged.
Farmer leaders raised this matter of private traders demanding papers from the farmers and buying paddy outside the mandis at low rates, at a dharna in Aliganj, Lakhimpur Kheri on October 13. After this, the district magistrate prohibited any direct selling to the mills.
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‘No luxury of time’
“I need the money by evening and selling it to the government is not viable for me. It takes way too long for me to sell my paddy to them and receive the payment,” Manjeet Singh a farmer from Chaugda farm, Lakhimpur Kheri, told Gaon Connection as he waited to sell 250 quintals of paddy to a private trader at Rs 1,200 a quintal, way below the MSP of Rs 1,940 a quintal.
“I need diesel, I have to plough my land and sow my next crop; I have to pay the labourers…,” Manjeet listed out his expenses. “Small farmers do not have the luxury of time. He has to sell his produce before he can sow his next crop. He has to sell fast in order to run his household,” he said.
Many paddy farmers are helplessly selling their produce at much lower rates than they should. “When the traders can get two-month credit, why would they want to pay cash upfront,” Malkit Singh from Shahjahanpur, asked. “But the farmer sometimes has no other option as he often has no place to store his grain. I have seen that in several mandis across the state the paddy is going at not more than thirteen hundred rupees a quintal,” he said.
On October 12, at Pilibhit, paddy sold at Rs 1,300, but Malkit Singh could not go there as he would have to find money for diesel to transport his grains 85 kilometres to Pilibhit. “Diesel costs Rs 95 a litre,” he said.
As it has been the norm, this year too the procurement will happen in two stages. Government procurement in some districts is between October 1 to January 31, 2021 while in others it is between November 1 to February 28, 2022. Four thousand procurement centres have been proposed across the state.
As of October 13, there are 2,040 procurement centres already in operation in the state.
Meanwhile, the woes of farmers continue. “The price of diesel, fertilisers, pesticides, everything has gone up. But we are getting less and less for our grains. If this continues, we will be forced to sell our lands,” Malkit Singh lamented.
Read this report in Hindi
With inputs from Mohit Shukla.
