Cold storage sheds across the country are still full of potatoes. Farmers, traders and cold storage owners fear losses of about Tk 4,000 crore if the 24 lakh tonnes stored there cannot be marketed within two months. Letters from the agriculture ministry to various offices asking them to use more potatoes in relief have not brought results.

To cut losses, the agriculture ministry has stressed wider use of potatoes and exports, and is about to finalise a four-year roadmap for industrial use and for growing exportable potatoes. People in the sector say the country needs 90 lakh tonnes of potatoes, but favourable conditions last season produced 1 crore 14 lakh tonnes, leaving a surplus of 24 lakh tonnes. Of the crop, 40 lakh tonnes were stored in the country's 400 cold stores. With hotels and everything else shut during the coronavirus, 65 per cent of those potatoes went unsold. Now, with market prices below costs, many farmers and traders are not taking potatoes out of storage, though the new season is just two months away. Unless sales are finished, there will be losses as well as problems storing the new crop.

Farmers and traders say potato production rises by 8 to 10 per cent a year, but diversified use has never been given priority. Some potatoes have been exported, but the market could not be held because of the varieties and quality.

Mosharraf Hossain, president of the Bangladesh Cold Storage Association, said only two months remain to market this season's potatoes. If the stored potatoes are not sold by then, a huge amount will remain unsold and will have to be thrown away.

He called for stepping up potato sales through TCB dealers and the OMS programme, and for the government to buy a reefer vessel with a capacity of 5,000 tonnes (a refrigerated ship for perishable goods) for exports, which would allow potatoes to be kept for a long time. He also called for better seed and special measures against soil-borne diseases to produce exportable potatoes, and for fairs at upazila and district level to popularise new tasty foods made from potatoes.

Traders want the September and October electricity bills of potato cold stores deferred and later paid without surcharge. To ease pressure on rice, they also proposed making potatoes compulsory in the residential halls of the law enforcement and defence forces.

The government gives Tk 800 crore in fertiliser subsidy for potato production, and that fertiliser is producing bumper harvests. But because no market has been built for potatoes, farmers take losses year after year. Farmers and cold storage owners said that, including production and storage rent, a 50 kg sack of potatoes costs a farmer Tk 850. The wholesale price of that sack is now Tk 400, meaning just Tk 8 a kg. In the past week potatoes have sold at Tk 20 to 25 a kg in retail markets in the capital.

At harvest time the price was Tk 13 to 14 a kg. Many did not sell then, storing potatoes in hope of better prices. At this time last year farmers sold a 50 kg sack for Tk 1,800 to 2,000.

Many farmers also took loans from cold storage owners against their stored potatoes, which they must now repay to take the potatoes out. Dalim Mia, manager of NN Cold Storage in Taraganj, Rangpur, said 1 lakh 46 thousand sacks of potatoes are still lying in his cold store. Farmers were given loans of Tk 250 against each sack.

Farmers and traders in Thakurgaon are now reluctant to take potatoes out of cold storage. They say they have lost money on potatoes in six of the past ten years. The situation is the same in Kurigram, Bogura, Joypurhat, Khulna, Munshiganj and other parts of the country.

Source: Samakal. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.