The Krishoker App, the digital channel through which farmers are meant to sell paddy directly to government food warehouses, is not working in Mymensingh, Samakal reports. Farmers say the app installs on their phones but will not open; server faults and technical problems have left it idle for a long time, so ordinary growers cannot register through it ahead of the aman procurement season.
Under the procurement policy, farmers are chosen in two ways: through the app, and from lists of actual growers drawn up by upazila agriculture offices. A food ministry letter of 30 September asks for union-by-union lists of genuine farmers to reach the district food controller by 21 October. Aman procurement is due to begin in November, though this year's target has not yet been set. Last year 2,256 tonnes of aman paddy were bought at the district's 19 warehouses.
Agriculture officers in Mymensingh's 13 upazilas are now reluctant to prepare the lists. They say that although they match each farmer's national ID, phone and bank account, food offices drop more than 70 to 80 percent of the names and, citing a lottery, buy paddy from their own people and middlemen. One officer, speaking anonymously, said farmers complain that their signatures are taken and they are sent off with only Tk 500 to Tk 1,000.
District food controller Mahmudul Hasan rejected the claims, saying farmers are finalised by open lottery under the policy and there is no room for irregularities. He said the app is run centrally, stays closed for most of the year and is opened by the government at set times. Regional food controller Ashraful Alam said the food department does not know the farmers, which is why it needs the agriculture department's lists.
According to the district Department of Agricultural Extension, transplanted aman covers more than 270,000 hectares in Mymensingh this season, and the district has about one million farmers. Irregular lists and harassment are putting ordinary growers off selling to the warehouses. Local farmers want the app restored at once and the agriculture offices' lists honoured transparently.
Professor Mohammad Saidur Rahman of the agricultural economics department at Bangladesh Agricultural University said the app needs monitoring to stay functional. Because farmers are not yet fully digital, he said, the agriculture officers' lists should be the main basis, and the government should buy all its paddy against those lists. The report is by Samakal's Mymensingh correspondent.
Photo: Press Information Department / Wikimedia Commons (public domain); aman procurement at a Pabna food warehouse in 2015
Source: Samakal
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