The market intervention by National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd. (NAFED) to purchase green gram directly from growers to stabilise the falling prices of the pulse has had little impact but for the slight increase in its prices in the wholesale market.
The farming community and its leaders are livid over the delay on the part of the Union and State governments in intervening in the market to arrest the fall in prices of green gram below the minimum support price and the incentive fixed by the Centre.
Madivalappa Chinamgeri, a green gram cultivator from Chinamgera village in Afzalpur taluk in Kalaburagi district, said, “What purpose it will serve….it will not help growers who had sold their produce in the market….it will only help traders to sell the produce purchased from the growers to the government and earn some quick profit.”
He was at the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee yard here to collect money from a private trader to whom he had sold the pulse at a throwaway price of Rs. 4,000 a quintal against the MSP of Rs. 4,800 a quintal and incentive of Rs. 425 a quintal fixed by the Union government,
Basavaraj Ingin, vice-president of the State Raitha Morcha of the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the president of the Karnataka Red Gram Growers’ Association, echoed the sentiment of the farmer and said that if the intervention had taken place at least a month earlier, the growers would have benefited.
The prices would have stabilised and gone up above the MSP fixed by the Union government. NAFED decided to intervene in the market by establishing procurement centres with the help of the Karnataka State Cooperative Marketing Federation in Kalaburagi, Bidar and Koppal districts, the three major greengram growing areas, on September 10, after a majority of the growers sold their produce in the wholesale market.
Although the prices of green gram in the wholesale market had increased from Rs. 3,500 to Rs. 4,200 a quintal to Rs. 4,800 to Rs. 5,200 a quintal after the market intervention, the response from farmers has been lukewarm.
Low quantity
As per official information, only over 177 quintals of green gram had been procured at the procurements centres established at Chincholi, Sedam, Chittapur and Kalaburagi in Kalaburagi district and only 23.24 quintals procured at the procurement centres established at Bidar, Aurad, Basavakalyan and Humnabad in Bidar.
The procurement centres established at Kuknur and Kustagi in Koppal were yet to procure the pulse.
NAFED was offering Rs. 5,225 a quintal for the pulse procured directly from the growers and this sum included Rs. 4,800 a quintal as MSP fixed by the Union government and an incentive of Rs. 425 a quintal.
