Vegetable farmers in Kerala stood a lower chance of getting a reasonable price for their harvest if they opted to sell their produce to the Kerala State Horticultural Products Development Corporation (Horticorp).
Despite drawing heavily on sizeable government subsidies to balance vegetable prices during festival seasons, the statutory corporation’s market intervention schemes seem to have little benefited small scale farmers who often braved debt traps, the vagaries of weather, wildlife, voracious middlemen and threat of pest infestation to keep their families off the breadline.
Auditors working for Amar Patnaik, Principal Accountant General (PAG), Economic and Revenue Sector Audit, has flagged the serious anomaly in a survey of Horticorp’s procurement and distribution process conducted in July this year.
The auditors found that Horticorp procured a bulk of its vegetables directly from farmers in Palakkad and Idukki.
The produce was transferred to Horticorp outlets in other districts “as sales and by adding a margin with the procurement price”. The outlets then sold the vegetables to the public by adding their own high margins. Consequently, the Horticrop “earned an overall margin varying from 50.77 per cent to 241.11 per cent”.
For instance, Horticorp procured snake gourd from farmers in Palakkad for Rs.9 per kg. In Thiruvananthapuram, the firm sold the produce for Rs.30.70 a kg.
The Corporation earned a 341 per cent profit in the transaction. The farmer received only “29.31 paisa of each rupee paid by the public,” auditors said.
Raju Narayana Swamy, Principal Secretary, Agriculture, told The Hindu that anomaly would be rectified. Farmers in Marayur and Kanthallur sold their vegetables mainly to middle men in Tamil Nadu from who they had taken advance money for cultivation. The government would declare major vegetable growing areas as “special agriculture zones.” Horticorp would buy the entire produce without grading. An effective cold chain to preserve produce would be established soon. Steps have been initiated to insulate farmers from agents who also double as loan sharks.
