VISAKHAPATNAM: The innocent farmer has been taken for a ride this time too. There is no one offering him the minimum support price for the paddy though farmers have been agitating ever since the harvesting is over. With the grain lying with them and monsoon threatening to set over the state, they are in a fix over how to protect their paddy and sell it at remunerative price.The FCI having not relaxed its norms for food-grain procurement, very few farmers are able to meet the guidelines. Other are left in the lurch with their paddy. Taking advantage of this, commission agents and rice-millers have moved in and are buying paddy at the lowest price possible.According to joint collector of Visakhapatnam Pola Bhaskar, four more paddy procurement centres have been opened in thedistrict but due to the poor quality of paddy, procurement is not going on on expected lines with FCI not buying the grain and the farmers insisting on MSP.“Kambala Simmanna, a farmer of Narsipatnam could not contain his anger. “There are about 42 MPs including 33 belonging to the Congress. What are they doing? They have not been able to bring pressure on the government to give guidelines for relaxation of norms for procurement. In a day or two the rainy season will start. Where will I keep my paddy. I will have to sell it for whatever price offered to me by commission agents,” he says.Farmers in Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram and Srikakulam are going through an ordeal due to heavy rains that lashed the region in December 2010. They are selling their Rabi crop to middlemen as Paddy Procurement Centres in the region failed to decide the quality of the paddy in a day. Ironically, very few farmers visited the paddy procurement centres in the region.In Srikakulam district, 29 Paddy Procurement Centres (PPCs), including seven of Food Corporation of India, were opened on May 31 and were expected to procure around 20,000 tonnes. Even after five days not a single bag of paddy was purchased by them from farmers who preferred to sell to middlemen who buy at their doorstep, saving them transportation charges. PPC staff, on the other hand, are more concerned about the quality, basing on which the Minimum Support Price is fixed _ `1,030 for Grade-A and `1,000 for others.Though some big farmers are yet to sell their produce in the hope of an increase in the price, small and marginal farmers are selling their produce to rice-millers and middlemen who are purchasing at the doorstep of farmers.``As monsoon is expected soon, we have no time to prepare for kharif season. We have to buy seeds and till the land. The paddy of rabi and kharif has to be sold as early as possible so that we can get ready for the kharif season,’’ said a farmer.In Vizianagaram district 41 PPCs have been opened by the civil supplies department to procure around 5,000 tonnes of paddy from farmers but PPC officials could not purchase even one tonne from farmers.During the kharif season, PPC staff procured around 77,000 tonnes against the target of 98,000 tonnes but in the rabi season a majority of farmers are keeping their produce for consumption only. However, some of the farmers selling their produce to middlemen as they get good returns of `1,000 a tonne without incurring expenses on transport and travel.The Visakhapatnam district administration has opened seven Paddy Procurement Centres expecting a procurement of around 10,000 tonnes of paddy from farmers. As a majority of farmers in the district are growing sugarcane rather than paddy the yield of paddy is very low in the district compared to Srikakulam and Vizianagaram and the paddy procurement centres in the district are waiting for farmers for procure paddy.According to reports, during the rabi season in the district the farmers produced around 17,000 tonnes of paddy but the majority of the farmers would consume the rabi crop. However, there is no shortage of gunny bags in Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram and Srikakulam districts but farmers are not interested to sell their paddy crop to PPCs in the region.
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