Kannauj, Uttar Pradesh

The potato fields of Kannauj Uttar Pradesh prepared for the Rabi season are waterlogged with the incessant and unexpected rains the state saw earlier this month. Prices of potatoes have shot up and it has done no good to either the potato farmers nor the consumers.

“It is quite possible that the potatoes will soon sell at thousand rupees per katti (approximately 50 kgs),” Vinod Kumar, a 60-year-old potato farmer from Khusatiya village in the district, told Gaon Connection.

The irony, said Vinod Kumar, was the fact that while he had sold potatoes for no more than Rs 270 per katti (50 kgs), he was now shelling out up to Rs 800 per katti to buy them.

Also Read: Incessant heavy rains damage standing and harvested crops in Uttar Pradesh bringing the farmers to their knees

Once the potato crop has been harvested, farmers usually keep the produce in cold storage. This serves two purposes. One, the farmer can sell the cold storage potatoes when their price goes up in the market, and the other is he can use the potatoes to sow his next crop. 

This time too, the potato farmers who had kept their previous produce in cold storage removed them and sold them in the market after retaining some to sow.  

Explaining the plight of the potato cultivators, Vinod Kumar said, “Most farmers sold their produce at cheap rates as they were in need of money to prepare for the next round of sowing.” According to him, whatever stocks they had, the farmers sold after keeping some for their own consumption and for sowing in the fields for the next season.

“But after the rains the fields are damaged and in order to replant potatoes, the farmer now has to buy some more from the traders at double the rate,” Vinod Kumar said.  

“I had planted three acres with potatoes. But the first rains in September and then the floods in Ishan river washed away my entire crop,” Harishchandra from Khaleporva village in Kannauj, told Gaon Connection. 

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UP grows 35 per cent of India’s potatoes

“The damage from the rains is yet to be ascertained. But almost every farmer here has faced tremendous loss,” Harishchandra said. He said his own losses were to the tune of a lakh of rupees. “We heard that we could lodge our complaints at the district magistrate’s office, but we have not been able to get in touch yet,” he added.

Uttar Pradesh produces 35 per cent of the country’s potatoes and is the largest cultivator of potatoes in the land, and approximately, 610,000 hectares of land in the state is under potato cultivation. In 2019-20, the yield of potatoes in Uttar Pradesh was 14.78 million tonnes. 

According to data from the ministry of agriculture and farmers welfare, the yield of potatoes nationwide in  2020-21, had increased to 53.69 million tonnes. In 2019-20 the national yield was 48.56 million tonnes. 

Also Read: Good news for potato farmers as scientists find a way to fight blight

Uttar Pradesh has also been in the grip of fever outbreaks across its districts which has added to the woes of farmers. 

“I needed money to treat family members who contracted dengue fever, and so I sold my potatoes at three hundred rupees for a katti,” Rajendra from Tidiapur village in Kannauj, told Gaon Connection. “But now the rate in the market has more than doubled and farmers are being forced to buy potatoes from traders at a high cost,” he added. 

Cold facts

According to the horticulture department of Kannauj, there are 142 cold storages in the district with a capacity of storing 1,445,986.71 metric tonnes of potatoes. Last year, after the harvest, 1,229,088 metric tonnes of spuds were stored in the cold storage. “About sixty per cent of the potatoes from the cold storage have been taken out,” Anuj Katiyar, Horticulture inspector, told Gaon Connection.

If September, farmers were fearing a glut in potato produce that would lead to a drop in prices of the potatoes in cold storage. Many of them took them out and sold them cheap to cut their losses in anticipation of a further drop in price.

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However, the rains in the state between October 14 and 20 completely reversed matters.   

“The main crop in the district at this time is the potato, but that has mostly been destroyed,” Manoj Chaturvedi, district horticulture officer, Kannauj, told Gaon Connection. “Nearly forty per cent of the sowing had been completed in the district and all that has been washed away,” he said. 

Meanwhile, retail vegetable vendors are also in grief. They are having to buy potatoes at a higher rate.

“I used to buy the potatoes from the storage at six hundred rupees a packet (50 kgs), now it is selling for nearly eight hundred rupees a packet,” Bunty Rathore, a vegetable retailer from Tirwa Kannauj, told Gaon Connection.  

“There is very little stock left in the cold storage now. And the potatoes are selling for nothing less than  seven hundred or eight hundred rupees a packet (50 kgs),” Arvind Pratap Singh, manager of a private cold storage unit in Kannauj, informed Gaon Connection. 

The floods in Ishan river caused untold damage in the villages of Sahnapur, Sikrori, Faguha, Bangar, Bhudia and others in the area, full of potato fields.

Read the story in Hindi.